James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: UNCOVERing the Faint-End of the z=7 [OIII] Luminosity Function with JWST's F410M Medium Bandpass Filter

Paper abstract: Strong emission from doubly ionized oxygen is a beacon for some of the most intensely star forming galaxies known. JWST enables the search for this beacon in the early universe with unprecedented sensitivity. In this work, we extend the study of faint [OIII]_{5008} selected galaxies by an order of magnitude in line luminosity. We use publicly available UNCOVER DR1 JWST/NIRCam and HST imaging data of the cluster lensing field, Abell 2744, to identify strong (rest-frame EW>500\AA) [OIII]_{5008} emitters at z~7 based on excess F410M flux. We find N=68 z~7 [OIII] candidates, with a subset of N=33 that have deep HST coverage required to rule-out lower redshift interlopers (13.68 arcmin^2 with F814W 5\sigma depth >28 AB). Such strong emission lines can lead to very red colors that could be misinterpreted as evidence for old, massive stellar populations, but are shown to be due to emission lines where we have spectra. Using this deep HST sample and completeness simulations, which calculate the effective survey volume of the UNCOVER lensing field as a function of [OIII] luminosity, we derive a new [OIII] luminosity function (LF) extending to 41.09<\rm{log}_{10}(L/\rm{erg\,s}^{-1})<42.35 which is an order of magnitude deeper than previous z~6 [OIII] LFs based on JWST slitless spectroscopy. This LF is well fit by a power law with a faint-end slope of \alpha=-2.07^{+0.22}_{-0.23}. There is little or no evolution between this LF and published [OIII] LFs at redshifts 3<~ z<~7, and no evidence of a turnover at faint luminosities. The sizes of these extreme [OIII] emitters are broadly similar to their low redshift counterparts, the green peas. The luminosity function of [OIII] emitters matches that of Lyman-\alpha at the bright end, suggesting that many of them should be Lyman-\alpha emitters.