J/A+A/694/A178 FRESCO Halpha emitter catalogue (Covelo-Paz+, 2025)
An Hα view of galaxy buildup in the first 2 Gyr:
Luminosity functions at z ∼ 4-6.5 from NIRCam/grism spectroscopy.
Covelo-Paz A., Giovinazzo E., Oesch P.A., Meyer R.A., Weibel A.,
Brammer G., Fudamoto Y., Kerutt J., Lin J., Matharu J., Naidu R.P.,
Velichko A., Bollo V., Bouwens R., Chisholm J., Illingworth G.D.,
Kramarenko I., Magee D., Maseda M., Matthee J., Nelson E., Reddy N.,
Schaerer D., Stefanon M., Xiao M.
<Astron. Astrophys. 694, A178 (2025)>
=2025A&A...694A.178C 2025A&A...694A.178C (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Galaxies ; Photometry, H-alpha ; Redshifts ; Ultraviolet
Keywords: galaxies: evolution - galaxies: formation - galaxies: high-redshift -
galaxies: luminosity function - mass function -
galaxies: star formation
Abstract:
The Hα nebular emission line is an optimal tracer for recent
star formation in galaxies. With the advent of JWST, this line has
recently become observable at z>3 for the first time. We present a
catalog of 1050 Hα emitters at 3.7<z<6.7 in the GOODS fields
obtained from a blind search in JWST NIRCam/grism data. We made use of
the FRESCO survey's 124 arcmin2 of observations in GOODS-North and
GOODS-South with the F444W filter, probing Hα at 4.9<z<6.7, and
the CONGRESS survey's 62 arcmin2 of observations in GOODS-North
with F356W, probing Hα at 3.8<z<5.1. We found an overdensity
with 98 sources at z∼4.4 in GOODS-N, and confirmed previously reported
overdensities at z∼5.2 in GOODS-N and at z∼5.4 and z∼5.9 in GOODS-S.
We computed the observed Hα luminosity functions (LFs) in three
bins centered at z∼4.45, 5.30, and 6.15, which are the first such
measurements at z>3 obtained based purely on spectroscopic data,
robustly tracing galaxy star formation rates (SFRs) beyond the peak of
the cosmic star formation history. We compared our results with
theoretical predictions from three different simulations and found
good agreement at z∼4-6. The UV LFs of this spectroscopically
confirmed sample are in good agreement with pre-JWST measurements
obtained with photometrically selected objects. Finally, we derived
SFR functions and integrated them to compute the evolution of the
cosmic SFR densities across z∼4-6, finding values in good agreement
with recent UV estimates from Lyman-break galaxies, which imply a
continuous decrease in SFR density by a factor of three over z∼4 to
z∼6. Our work shows the power of NIRCam grism observations to
efficiently provide new tests for early galaxy formation models based
on emission line statistics.
Description:
We used NIRCam/grism spectra with the F444W filter from FRESCO (Oesch
et al., 2023MNRAS.525.2864O 2023MNRAS.525.2864O) and the F356W filter from CONGRESS (Sun,
Egami et al., in prep., Egami et al. 2023, Complete NIRCam Grism
Redshift Survey (CONGRESS), JWST Proposal. Cycle 2, ID. #3577). Both
surveys observed 62 arcmin2 of the GOODS-North field, and their
combined spectra cover the wavelength range 3.1-5.0um. Moreover,
FRESCO observed 62 arcmin2 of the GOODS-South field, covering
3.8-5.0um. The combination of FRESCO and CONGRESS data allowed us to
perform a blind search of Hα emitters in the redshift range of
3.7<z<6.7 in GOODS-North and 4.9<z<6.7 in GOODS-South.
we presented a new catalog of Hα emitters in the GOODS fields
obtained using NIRCam/grism spectroscopy from JWST's FRESCO and
CONGRESS surveys. These 1050 sources entail a
completeness-characterized census of line emitters at
3.8<z<6.6 in GOODS-North and at 4.9<z<6.6 in GOODS-South.
For the final Hα catalog we selected sources with an overall
quality flag q≥1.75, meaning that a majority of the team
believed these lines to be likely real. The result is a catalog with
1050 Hα emitters: 554 from CONGRESS (in GOODS-N) and 503 from
FRESCO (318 in GOODS-N and 185 in GOODS-S), with seven sources in both
surveys.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
catalog.dat 129 503 FRESCO Halpha emitter catalogue v2
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: catalog.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 16 A16 --- Field GOODS fields identifier: fresco-only-n-v2 and
fresco-only-s-v2 for single-component
sources; multigalaxies-GN and
multigalaxies-GS for multi-component sources
18- 24 I7 --- Id [70/1000032] ID from the FRESCO grizli data
reduction v7.3
26- 44 A19 --- multiIds For multi-component galaxies,
id number of each component
46- 56 F11.7 deg RAdeg Right ascension (J2000) of the source (1)
58- 68 F11.7 deg DEdeg Declination (J2000) of the source (1)
70- 73 F4.2 --- Qual Visual inspection quality flag,
averaged over 4 inspections
75- 79 F5.3 --- z Redshift of the HA emitter
81- 89 E9.4 mW/m2 FHa grizli best-fit line flux using a fixed
redshift in cgi units (erg/s/cm2)
91- 99 E9.4 mW/m2 e_FHa rms uncertainty on FHa
101-107 F7.3 mag UVMAG Rest-frame absolute UV magnitude (AB) from the
fluxes of filters that lay on the
rest-frame UV
109-113 F5.3 mag e_UVMAG rms uncertainty on UVMAG
115-122 F8.3 nJy Fdetimg Combined F444W+F210M flux from the FRESCO
grizli data reduction v7.3. (2)
124-129 F6.3 nJy e_Fdetimg rms uncertainty on Fdetimg
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Note (1): in the F210M+F444W image from the FRESCO grizli data reduction v7.3
(also see further Weibel et al., 2024MNRAS.533.1808W 2024MNRAS.533.1808W).
Note (2): PSF-matched, aperture-corrected fluxes and errors with 5% error floor
(also see further Weibel et al., 2024MNRAS.533.1808W 2024MNRAS.533.1808W, for details on the
imaging data reduction).
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History:
Copied at https://github.com/astroalba/fresco
License: CC-BY-4.0
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 25-Apr-2026