Journal article
The JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS): an untargeted search for H α emission line galaxies at z greater than 6 and their physical properties
- Abstract:
- We present the first results of the JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS). Utilizing the first NIRCam narrow-band imaging at 4.7 m, over 63 arcmin in the PRIMER/COSMOS field, we have identified 609 emission line galaxy candidates. From these, we robustly selected 35 H star-forming galaxies at , with H star-formation rates () of . Combining our unique H sample with the exquisite panchromatic data in the field, we explored their physical properties and star-formation histories, and compared these to a broad-band selected sample at which has offered vital new insights into the nature of high-redshift galaxies. UV-continuum slopes () were considerably redder for our H sample () compared to the broad-band sample (). This was not due to dust attenuation as our H sample was relatively dust-poor (median ); instead, we argue that the reddened slopes could be due to nebular continuum. We compared and the UV-continuum-derived to SED-fitted measurements averaged over canonical time-scales of 10 and 100 Myr ( and ). We found an increase in recent SFR for our sample of H emitters, particularly at lower stellar masses (). We also found that strongly traces SFR averaged over 10 Myr time-scales, whereas the UV-continuum overpredicts SFR on 100 Myr time-scales at low stellar masses. These results point to our H sample undergoing ‘bursty’ star formation. Our F356W sample showed a larger scatter in across all stellar masses, which has highlighted how narrow-band photometric selections of H emitters are key to quantifying the burstiness of star-formation activity.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 36.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/mnras/staf1006
Authors
+ Space Telescope Science Institute
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/036f5mx38
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
+ National Agency for Research and Development
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02ap3w078
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 541
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 1348-1376
- Publication date:
- 2025-06-23
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-06-02
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1365-2966
- ISSN:
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0035-8711
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2242304
- Local pid:
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pubs:2242304
- Source identifiers:
-
3108746
- Deposit date:
-
2025-07-11
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Pirie et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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