Improving z ∼ 7-11 Galaxy Property Estimates with JWST/NIRCam Medium-band Photometry

The past decade has seen impressive progress in the detection of z > 7 galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope; however, little is known about their properties. The James Webb Space Telescope will revolutionize the high-z field by providing near-IR (i.e., rest-frame optical) data of unprecedented depth and spatial resolution. Measuring galaxy quantities such as resolved stellar ages or gas metallicity gradients traditionally requires spectroscopy, as broadband imaging filters are generally too coarse to fully isolate diagnostics such as the 4000 A (rest-frame) break, continuum emission from aged stars, and key emission lines (e.g., [O ii], [O iii], H beta). However, in this paper, we show that adding NIRCam images through a strategically chosen medium-band filter to common wide-band filter sets adopted by ERS and GTO programs delivers tighter constraints on these galactic properties. To constrain the choice of filter, we perform a systematic investigation of which combinations of wide-band filters from ERS and GTO programs and single medium-band filters offer the tightest constraints on several galaxy properties at redshifts z similar to 7-11. We employ the JAGUAR extragalactic catalogs to construct statistical samples of physically motivated mock photometry and conduct SED-fitting procedures to evaluate the accuracy of galaxy property (and photo-z) recovery with a simple star formation history model. We find that adding >4.1 mu m medium filters at comparable depth to the broadband filters can significantly improve photo-zs and yield close to order-of-magnitude improvements in the determination of quantities such as stellar ages, metallicities, SF-related quantities, and emission-line fluxes at z similar to 8. For resolved sources, the proposed approach enables the spatially resolved determination of these quantities that would be prohibitive with slit spectroscopy.

Automated summary

In the past decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has made impressive progress in detecting z > 7 galaxies, but their properties remain largely unknown. The James Webb Space Telescope will revolutionize the high-z field by providing near-IR data.