The GREATS H$beta$+[OIII] Luminosity Function and Galaxy Properties at $mathbf{zsim8}$: Walking the Way of JWST


Abstract in English

The James Webb Space Telescope will allow to spectroscopically study an unprecedented number of galaxies deep into the reionization era, notably by detecting [OIII] and H$beta$ nebular emission lines. To efficiently prepare such observations, we photometrically select a large sample of galaxies at $zsim8$ and study their rest-frame optical emission lines. Combining data from the GOODS Re-ionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS) survey and from HST, we perform spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting, using synthetic SEDs from a large grid of photoionization models. The deep Spitzer/IRAC data combined with our models exploring a large parameter space enables to constrain the [OIII]+H$beta$ fluxes and equivalent widths for our sample, as well as the average physical properties of $zsim8$ galaxies, such as the ionizing photon production efficiency with $log(xi_mathrm{ion}/mathrm{erg}^{-1}hspace{1mm}mathrm{Hz})geq25.77$. We find a relatively tight correlation between the [OIII]+H$beta$ and UV luminosity, which we use to derive for the first time the [OIII]+H$beta$ luminosity function (LF) at $zsim8$. The $zsim8$ [OIII]+H$beta$ LF is higher at all luminosities compared to lower redshift, as opposed to the UV LF, due to an increase of the [OIII]+H$beta$ luminosity at a given UV luminosity from $zsim3$ to $zsim8$. Finally, using the [OIII]+H$beta$ LF, we make predictions for JWST/NIRSpec number counts of $zsim8$ galaxies. We find that the current wide-area extragalactic legacy fields are too shallow to use JWST at maximal efficiency for $zsim8$ spectroscopy even at 1hr depth and JWST pre-imaging to $gtrsim30$ mag will be required.

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