Unveiling the Nature of Infrared Bright, Optically Dark Galaxies with Early JWST Data

Abstract

Over the last few years, both ALMA and Spitzer/IRAC observations have revealed a population of likely massive galaxies at $z>3$ that was too faint to be detected in HST rest-frame ultraviolet imaging. However, due to the very limited photometry for individual galaxies, the true nature of these so-called HST-dark galaxies has remained elusive. Here, we present the first sample of such galaxies observed with very deep, high-resolution NIRCam imaging from the Early Release Science Program CEERS. 30 HST-dark sources are selected based on their red colours across 1.6 $\mu$m to 4.4 $\mu$m. Their physical properties are derived from 12-band multi-wavelength photometry, including ancillary HST imaging. We find that these galaxies are generally heavily dust-obscured ($A_V\sim 2$ mag), massive ($\log (M/M_{\odot })\sim 10$), star-forming sources at $z\sim 2-8$ with an observed surface density of $\sim 0.8$ arcmin${}^{-2}$. This suggests that an important fraction of massive galaxies may have been missing from our cosmic census at $z>3$ all the way into the Reionization epoch. The HST-dark sources lie on the main sequence of galaxies and add an obscured star formation rate density (SFRD) of $3.2_{-1.3}^{+1.8}\times 10^{-3}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }/yr/Mp{\mathrm{c}}^3$ at $z\sim 7$ showing likely presence of dust in the Epoch of Reionization. Our analysis shows the unique power of JWST to reveal this previously missing galaxy population and to provide a more complete census of galaxies at $z=2-8$ based on rest-frame optical imaging.

9 pages, 7 figures, accepted to MNRAS

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