EPOCHS IX. When cosmic dawn breaks: evidence for evolved stellar populations in 7 &lt; <i>z</i> &lt; 12 galaxies from PEARLS GTO and public NIRCam imaging
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The presence of evolved stars in high-redshift galaxies can place valuable indirect constraints on the onset of star formation in the Universe. Thus, we use PEARLS GTO (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science Guaranteed Time Observations) and public NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) photometric data to search for Balmer-break candidate galaxies at 7 < z < 12. We find that our Balmer-break candidates at z ∼ 10.5 tend to be older (115 Myr), have lower inferred [O iii] + Hβ equivalent widths (120 Å), have lower specific star formation rates (6 Gyr−1) and redder UV slopes (β = −1.8) than our control sample of galaxies. However, these trends all become less strong at z ∼ 8, where the F444W filter now probes the strong rest-frame optical emission lines, thus providing additional constraints on the current star formation activity of these galaxies. Indeed, the bursty nature of epoch of reionization galaxies can lead to a disconnect between their current spectral energy distribution (SED) profiles and their more extended star formation histories. We discuss how strong emission lines, the cumulative effect of weak emission lines, dusty continua, and active galactic nuclei can all contribute to the photometric excess seen in the rest-frame optical, thus mimicking the signature of a Balmer break. Additional medium-band imaging will thus be essential to more robustly identify Balmer-break galaxies. However, the Balmer break alone cannot serve as a definitive proxy for the stellar age of galaxies, being complexly dependent on the star formation history. Ultimately, deep Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) continuum spectroscopy and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) imaging will provide the strongest indirect constraints on the formation era of the first galaxies in the Universe, thereby revealing when cosmic dawn breaks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".