Journal article
The rate and contribution of mergers to mass assembly from NIRCam observations of galaxy candidates up to 13.3 billion years ago
N Dalmasso, A Calabrò, N Leethochawalit, B Vulcani, K Boyett, M Trenti, T Treu, M Castellano, M Bradač, B Metha, P Santini
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2024
Abstract
We present an analysis of the galaxy merger rate in the redshift range 4.0 < z < 9.0 (i.e. about 1.5 to 0.5 Gyr after the big bang) based on visually identified galaxy mergers from morphological parameter analysis. Our data set is based on high-resolution NIRCam JWST data (a combination of F150W and F2000W broad-band filters) in the low-to-moderate magnification (μ < 2) regions of the Abell 2744 cluster field. From a parent set of 675 galaxies (MU ∈ [−26.6, −17.9]), we identify 64 merger candidates from the Gini, M20 and asymmetry morphological parameters, leading to a merger fraction fm = 0.11 ± 0.04. There is no evidence of redshift evolution of fm even at the highest redshift considered, ..
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Grants
Awarded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous referee for useful suggestions and comments that have improved the manuscript. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSAJWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programmes JWST-ERS-1324, JWST-GO-2561, and JWST-DDT-2756. BV acknowledges support from the INAF Large Grant 2022 'Extragalactic Surveys with JWST' (PI Pentericci). BV was supported by the European Union-NextGenerationEU RFF M4C2 1.1 PRIN 2022 project 2022ZSL4BL INSIGHT. MB acknowledges support from the ERC Advanced Grant FIRSTLIGHT and Slovenian national research agency ARRS through grants N1-0238 and P1-0188. BM acknowledges support from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.