JADES Imaging of GN-z11: Revealing the Morphology and Environment of a Luminous Galaxy 430 Myr after the Big Bang
Maseda, Michael V.; Carniani, Stefano; Übler, Hannah; Maiolino, Roberto; Cameron, Alex J.; Scholtz, Jan; Willott, Chris; Johnson, Benjamin D.; Ji, Zhiyuan; Shivaei, Irene; Nelson, Erica; Chen, Zuyi; Endsley, Ryan; Rix, Hans-Walter; Lyu, Jianwei; Saxena, Aayush; Curtis-Lake, Emma; Smit, Renske; Witstok, Joris; Curti, Mirko; Charlot, Stephane; de Graaff, Anna; Looser, Tobias J.; Rawle, Tim; Alberts, Stacey; Egami, Eiichi; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Hainline, Kevin; Hausen, Ryan; Rieke, George; Rieke, Marcia; Sun, Fengwu; Tacchella, Sandro; Williams, Christina C.; Willmer, Christopher N. A.; Baker, William M.; Baum, Stefi; Bhatawdekar, Rachana; Boyett, Kristan; Helton, Jakob M.; Sandles, Lester; Suess, Katherine A.; Topping, Michael W.; Whitler, Lily; Bunker, Andrew; Robertson, Brant; Danhaive, A. Lola; Puskás, Dávid
United Kingdom, United States, Italy, France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Netherlands, Australia
Abstract
We present JWST NIRCam nine-band near-infrared imaging of the luminous z = 10.6 galaxy GN-z11 from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey of the GOODS-N field. We find a spectral energy distribution (SED) entirely consistent with the expected form of a high-redshift galaxy: a clear blue continuum from 1.5 to 4 μm with a complete dropout in F115W. The core of GN-z11 is extremely compact in JWST imaging. We analyze the image with a two-component model, using a point source and a Sérsic profile that fits to a half-light radius of 200 pc and an index n = 0.9. We find a low-surface-brightness haze about 0.″4 to the northeast of the galaxy, which is most likely a foreground object but might be a more extended component of GN-z11. At a spectroscopic redshift of 10.60 (Bunker et al. 2023), the comparison of the NIRCam F410M and F444W images spans the Balmer jump. From population-synthesis modeling, here assuming no light from an active galactic nucleus, we reproduce the SED of GN-z11, finding a stellar mass of ~109 M ⊙, a star formation rate of ~20 M ⊙ yr-1, and a young stellar age of ~20 Myr. Since massive galaxies at high redshift are likely to be highly clustered, we search for faint neighbors of GN-z11, finding nine galaxies out to ~5 comoving Mpc transverse with photometric redshifts consistent with z = 10.6, and a tenth more tentative dropout only 3″ away. This is consistent with GN-z11 being hosted by a massive dark-matter halo (≈8 × 1010 M ⊙), though lower halo masses cannot be ruled out.