Spectroscopic Confirmation of CEERS NIRCam-selected Galaxies at z ≃ 8–10

Abstract

Abstract We present JWST/NIRSpec prism spectroscopy of seven galaxies selected from Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey NIRCam imaging with photometric redshifts z phot > 8. We measure emission line redshifts of z = 7.65 and 8.64 for two galaxies. For two other sources without securely detected emission lines we measure z = 9.77 − 0.29 + 0.37 and 10.01 − 0.19 + 0.14 by fitting model spectral templates to the prism data, from which we detect continuum breaks consistent with Lyα opacity from a mostly neutral intergalactic medium. The presence of strong breaks and the absence of strong emission lines give high confidence that these two galaxies have redshifts z > 9.6, but the redshift values derived from the breaks alone have large uncertainties given the low spectral resolution and relatively low S/N of the CEERS NIRSpec prism data. The two z ∼ 10 sources observed are relatively luminous (M UV < −20), with blue continua (−2.3 ≲ β ≲ −1.9) and low dust attenuation ( A V ≃ 0.15 − 0.1 + 0.3 ); and at least one of them has a high stellar mass for a galaxy at that redshift ( log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) ≃ 9.3 − 0.3 + 0.2 ). Considered together with spectroscopic observations of other CEERS NIRCam-selected high-z galaxy candidates in the literature, we find a high rate of redshift confirmation and low rate of confirmed interlopers (8%). Ten out of 35 z > 8 candidates with CEERS NIRSpec spectroscopy do not have secure redshifts, but the absence of emission lines in their spectra is consistent with redshifts z > 9.6. We find that z > 8 photometric redshifts are generally in agreement (within their uncertainties) with the spectroscopic values, but also that the photometric redshifts tend to be slightly overestimated (〈Δz〉 = 0.45 ± 0.11), suggesting that current templates do not fully describe the spectra of very-high-z sources. Overall, the spectroscopy solidifies photometric redshift evidence for a high spatial density of bright galaxies at z > 8 compared to theoretical model predictions, and further disfavors an accelerated decline in the integrated UV luminosity density at z > 8.