Chevallard, J, Curtis-Lake, E, Charlot, S, Ferruit, P, Giardino, G, Franx, M, Maseda, MV, Amorin, R, Arribas, S, Bunker, A, Carniani, S, Husemann, B, Jakobsen, P, Maiolino, R, Pforr, J, Rawle, TD, Rix, H-W, Smit, R and Willott, CJ (2018) Simulating and interpreting deep observations in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field with the JWST/NIRSpec low-resolution 'prism'. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 483 (2). pp. 2621-2640. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the detection of optical emission lines in galaxies spanning a broad range of luminosities out to redshifts z ≳ 10. Measurements of key galaxy properties, such as star formation rate and metallicity, through these observations will provide unique insight into, e.g. the role of feedback from stars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in regulating galaxy evolution, the co-evolution of AGNs and host galaxies, the physical origin of the ‘main sequence’ of star-forming galaxies, and the contribution by star-forming galaxies to cosmic reionization. We present an original framework to simulate and analyse observations performed with the near-infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board JWST. We use the BEAGLE tool (BayEsian Analysis of GaLaxy sEds) to build a semi-empirical catalogue of galaxy spectra based on photometric spectral energy distributions of dropout galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). We demonstrate that the resulting catalogue of galaxy spectra satisfies different types of observational constraints on high-redshift galaxies, and use it as an input to simulate NIRSpec/prism (R ∼ 100) observations. We show that a single ‘deep’ (∼100 ks) NIRSpec/prism pointing in the HUDF will enable S/N>3 detections of multiple optical emission lines in ∼30 (∼60) galaxies at z ≳ 6 (⁠z∼4-6⁠) down to mF160W≲30 AB mag. Such observations will allow measurements of galaxy star formation rates, ionization parameters, and gas-phase metallicities within factors of 1.5, mass-to-light ratios within a factor of 2, galaxy ages within a factor of 3, and V-band attenuation optical depths with a precision of 0.3.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2018 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	22 Jun 2020 10:16
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 07:08
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/sty2426
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/13157

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