TY - JOUR
T1 - PRIMER & JADES reveal an abundance of massive quiescent galaxies at 2 < z < 5
AU - Stevenson, Struan D.
AU - Carnall, Adam C.
AU - Leung, Ho-Hin
AU - Taylor, Elizabeth
AU - Cullen, Fergus
AU - Dunlop, James S.
AU - McLeod, Derek J.
AU - McLure, Ross J.
AU - Begley, Ryan
AU - Arellano-Córdova, Karla Z.
AU - Barrufet, Laia
AU - Bondestam, Cecilia
AU - Donnan, Callum T.
AU - Ellis, Richard S.
AU - Grogin, Norman A.
AU - Koekemoer, Anton M.
AU - Liu, Feng-Yuan
AU - Pérez-González, Pablo G.
AU - Rowlands, Kate
AU - Sanders, Ryan L.
AU - Scholte, Dirk
AU - Shapley, Alice E.
AU - Skarbinski, Maya
AU - Stanton, Thomas M.
AU - Wild, Vivienne
N1 - Funding: SDS, ACC, H-HL, and ET acknowledge support from a UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee Grant (PI Carnall; grant reference EP/Y037065/1). FC, TMS, KZA-C, and DS acknowledge support from a UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee Grant (PI Cullen; grant reference: EP/X021025/1). Support for Program number JWST-GO-03543.014 was provided through a grant from the STScI under NASA contract NAS5-03127. We gratefully acknowledge support from the NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) under grant 80NSSC23K0495.
PY - 2026/1/1
Y1 - 2026/1/1
N2 - We select a mass-complete sample of 225 quiescent galaxies at z > 2 with M∗ > 1010 M☉ from PRIMER and JADES photometry spanning a total area of ≃ 320 sq. arcmin. Our analysis is restricted to only area with optical coverage in three Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS filters, which we show is important for selecting the most complete and clean samples. We investigate the contamination in our sample via James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRSpec spectroscopy, Chandra X-ray imaging, and ALMA interferometry, calculating a modest contamination fraction of 12.9+4.0−3.1 per cent. The removal of HST data increases star-forming galaxy contamination by ≃ 10 per cent and results in a ≃ 20 per cent loss of candidates recovered from HST + JWST data combined. We calculate massive quiescent galaxy number densities at 2 < z < 5, finding values three times larger than pre-JWST estimates, but generally in agreement with more-recent and larger-area JWST studies. In comparison with simulations, we find that most can now reproduce the observed number density at 2 < z < 3; however, they still increasingly fall short at z > 3, up to ≃ 1 dex. We place 14 of our z > 3 massive quiescent galaxies on the BPT and WHaN diagrams using medium-resolution spectroscopic data from the EXCELS survey, finding a very high incidence of weak active galactic nucleus (≃ 50 per cent), consistent with recent results at cosmic noon. This is interesting in the context of ‘maintenance-mode’ feedback, which is invoked in many simulations to prevent the re-ignition of quenched galaxies. To properly characterize the evolution of early massive quiescent galaxies, greater coverage in optical filters and significantly larger spectroscopic samples will be required.
AB - We select a mass-complete sample of 225 quiescent galaxies at z > 2 with M∗ > 1010 M☉ from PRIMER and JADES photometry spanning a total area of ≃ 320 sq. arcmin. Our analysis is restricted to only area with optical coverage in three Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS filters, which we show is important for selecting the most complete and clean samples. We investigate the contamination in our sample via James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRSpec spectroscopy, Chandra X-ray imaging, and ALMA interferometry, calculating a modest contamination fraction of 12.9+4.0−3.1 per cent. The removal of HST data increases star-forming galaxy contamination by ≃ 10 per cent and results in a ≃ 20 per cent loss of candidates recovered from HST + JWST data combined. We calculate massive quiescent galaxy number densities at 2 < z < 5, finding values three times larger than pre-JWST estimates, but generally in agreement with more-recent and larger-area JWST studies. In comparison with simulations, we find that most can now reproduce the observed number density at 2 < z < 3; however, they still increasingly fall short at z > 3, up to ≃ 1 dex. We place 14 of our z > 3 massive quiescent galaxies on the BPT and WHaN diagrams using medium-resolution spectroscopic data from the EXCELS survey, finding a very high incidence of weak active galactic nucleus (≃ 50 per cent), consistent with recent results at cosmic noon. This is interesting in the context of ‘maintenance-mode’ feedback, which is invoked in many simulations to prevent the re-ignition of quenched galaxies. To properly characterize the evolution of early massive quiescent galaxies, greater coverage in optical filters and significantly larger spectroscopic samples will be required.
KW - Galaxies: evolution
KW - Galaxies: formation
KW - Galaxies: high-redshift
KW - Galaxies: statistics
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06913
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/staf2087
DO - 10.1093/mnras/staf2087
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 545
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 3
M1 - staf2087
ER -