paper

GOALS-JWST: Revealing the Buried Star Clusters in the Luminous Infrared Galaxy VV 114

arXiv:2210.05763 · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/acb335

Abstract

We present the results of a {\it James Webb Space Telescope} NIRCam investigation into the young massive star cluster (YMC) population in the luminous infrared galaxy VV 114. We identify 374 compact YMC candidates with a , 5, and 5 at F150W, F200W, and F356W respectively. A direct comparison with our {\it HST} cluster catalog reveals that of these sources are undetected at optical wavelengths. Based on {\it yggdrasil} stellar population models, we identify 17 YMC candidates in our {\it JWST} imaging alone with F150W-F200W and F200W-F356W colors suggesting they are all very young, dusty (), and massive (). The discovery of these `hidden' sources, many of which are found in the `overlap' region between the two nuclei, quadruples the number of Myr clusters, and nearly doubles the number of Myr clusters detected in VV 114. Now extending the cluster age distribution () to the youngest ages, we find a slope of for , which is consistent with the previously determined value from , and confirms that VV 114 has a steep age distribution slope for all massive star clusters across the entire range of cluster ages observed. Finally, the consistency between our {\it JWST}- and {\it HST}-derived age distribution slopes indicates that the balance between cluster formation and destruction has not been significantly altered in VV 114 over the last 0.5 Gyr.

13 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, published in the Astrophysical Journal

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