Early Results from GLASS-JWST. IX. First Spectroscopic Confirmation of Low-mass Quiescent Galaxies at z > 2 with NIRISS

Creators: Marchesini, Danilo; Brammer, Gabriel B.; Morishita, Takahiro; Bergamini, Pietro; Wang, Xin; Bradac, Marusa; Roberts-Borsani, Guido; Strait, Victoria; Treu, Tommaso; Fontana, Adriano; Jones, Tucker; Santini, Paola; Vulcani, Benedetta; Acebron, Ana; Calabrò, Antonello; Castellano, Marco; Glazebrook, Karl; Grillo, Claudio; Mercurio, Amata; Nanayakkara, Themiya; Rosati, Piero; Tubthong, Chanita; Vanzella, Eros

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Abstract

How passive galaxies form, and the physical mechanisms which prevent star formation over long timescales, are some of the most outstanding questions in understanding galaxy evolution. The properties of quiescent galaxies over cosmic time provide crucial information to identify the quenching mechanisms. Passive galaxies have been confirmed and studied out to z ∼ 4, but all of these studies have been limited to massive systems (mostly with log(M_(star)/M_⊙) > 10.8). Using JWST-NIRISS grism slitless spectroscopic data from the GLASS-JWST Early Release Science program, we present spectroscopic confirmation of two quiescent galaxies at z_(spec) = 2.650^(+0.004)_(-0.006) and z_(spec) = 2.433^(+0.032)_(-0.016) (3σ errors) with with stellar masses of log(M_(star)/M_⊙) = 10.59^(+0.11)_(-0.05) and log(M_(star)/M_⊙) = 10.07^(+0.06)_(-0.03) (corrected for magnification factors of μ = 2.0 and μ = 2.1, respectively). The latter represents the first spectroscopic confirmation of the existence of low-mass quiescent galaxies at cosmic noon, showcasing the power of JWST to identify and characterize this enigmatic population.

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© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program JWST-ERS-1324. Support for program GLASS-JWST ERS-1324 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127. D.M. and C.T. acknowledge financial support from program HST-GO-17231, provided through a grant from the STScI under NASA contract NAS5-26555. PS acknowledges INAF Mini Grant 2022 "The evolution of passive galaxies through cosmic time". K.G. and T.N. acknowledge support from Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship FL180100060. We acknowledge financial support through grants PRIN-MIUR 2017WSCC32 and 2020SKSTHZ. AA has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101024195 — ROSEAU. M.B. acknowledges support from the Slovenian national research agency ARRS through grant N1-0238. This work is based on data and catalog products from HFF-DeepSpace, funded by the National Science Foundation and Space Telescope Science Institute (operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555). The Cosmic Dawn Center is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) under grant No. 140. Cloud-based data processing and file storage for this work is provided by the AWS Cloud Credits for Research program.

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