Accelerated formation of ultra-massive galaxies in the first billion years

Mengyuan Xiao; Pascal A Oesch; David Elbaz; Longji Bing; Erica J Nelson; Andrea Weibel; Garth D Illingworth; Pieter van Dokkum; Rohan P Naidu; Emanuele Daddi; Rychard J Bouwens; Jorryt Matthee; Stijn Wuyts; John Chisholm; Gabriel Brammer; Mark Dickinson; Benjamin Magnelli; Lucas Leroy; Daniel Schaerer; Thomas Herard-Demanche; Seunghwan Lim; Laia Barrufet; Ryan Endsley; Yoshinobu Fudamoto; Carlos Gómez-Guijarro; Rashmi Gottumukkala; Ivo Labbé; Dan Magee; Danilo Marchesini; Michael Maseda; Yuxiang Qin; Naveen A Reddy; Alice Shapley; Irene Shivaei; Marko Shuntov; Mauro Stefanon; Katherine E Whitaker; J Stuart B Wyithe

doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08094-5

Accelerated formation of ultra-massive galaxies in the first billion years

Nature. 2024 Nov;635(8038):311-315. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08094-5. Epub 2024 Nov 13.

Authors

Mengyuan Xiao¹, Pascal A Oesch^{2

3}, David Elbaz⁴, Longji Bing⁵, Erica J Nelson⁶, Andrea Weibel², Garth D Illingworth⁷, Pieter van Dokkum⁸, Rohan P Naidu⁹, Emanuele Daddi⁴, Rychard J Bouwens¹⁰, Jorryt Matthee¹¹, Stijn Wuyts¹², John Chisholm¹³, Gabriel Brammer³, Mark Dickinson¹⁴, Benjamin Magnelli⁴, Lucas Leroy⁴, Daniel Schaerer², Thomas Herard-Demanche¹⁰, Seunghwan Lim^{15

16}, Laia Barrufet², Ryan Endsley¹³, Yoshinobu Fudamoto^{17

18}, Carlos Gómez-Guijarro⁴, Rashmi Gottumukkala², Ivo Labbé¹⁹, Dan Magee⁷, Danilo Marchesini²⁰, Michael Maseda²¹, Yuxiang Qin^{22

23}, Naveen A Reddy²⁴, Alice Shapley²⁵, Irene Shivaei²⁶, Marko Shuntov³, Mauro Stefanon^{27

28}, Katherine E Whitaker^{3

29}, J Stuart B Wyithe^{22

23}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland. [email protected].
² Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Versoix, Switzerland.
³ Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁴ Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, AIM, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
⁵ Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
⁶ Department for Astrophysical and Planetary Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁷ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
⁸ Astronomy Department, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁹ MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁰ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
¹¹ Department of Physics, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland.
¹² Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
¹³ Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
¹⁴ NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, Tucson, AZ, USA.
¹⁵ Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁶ Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁷ Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁸ National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁹ Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
²⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
²¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
²² School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
²³ ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
²⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
²⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
²⁶ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁷ Departament d'Astronomia i Astrofısica, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain.
²⁸ Unidad Asociada CSIC 'Grupo de Astrofísica Extragaláctica y Cosmología' (Instituto de Física de Cantabria - Universitat de València), Valencia, Spain.
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.

PMID: 39537883
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08094-5

Abstract

Recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed an unexpected abundance of massive-galaxy candidates in the early Universe, extending further in redshift and to lower luminosity than what had previously been found by submillimetre surveys^1-6. These JWST candidates have been interpreted as challenging the Λ cold dark-matter cosmology (where Λ is the cosmological constant)^7-9, but, so far, these studies have mostly relied on only rest-frame ultraviolet data and have lacked spectroscopic confirmation of their redshifts^10-16. Here we report a systematic study of 36 massive dust-obscured galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts between 5 and 9 from the JWST FRESCO survey. We find no tension with the Λ cold dark-matter model in our sample. However, three ultra-massive galaxies (logM_★/M_⊙ ≳ 11.0, where M_★ is the stellar mass and M_⊙ is the mass of the Sun) require an exceptional fraction of 50 per cent of baryons converted into stars-two to three times higher than the most efficient galaxies at later epochs. The contribution from an active galactic nucleus is unlikely because of their extended emission. Ultra-massive galaxies account for as much as 17 per cent of the total cosmic star-formation-rate density¹⁷ at redshifts between about five and six.