JADES: Low Surface Brightness Galaxies at 0.4 < z < 0.8 in GOODS-S

Abstract

Low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) are an important class of galaxies that allow us to broaden our understanding of galaxy formation and test various cosmological models. We present a survey of low surface brightness galaxies at $0.4<z_{\mathrm{phot}}<0.8$ in the GOODS-S field using JADES data. We model LSB surface brightness profiles, identifying those with ${\bar{\mu }}_{\mathrm{eff}}>24$ mag arcsec${}^{-2}$ in the F200W JWST/NIRCam filter. We study the spatial distribution, number density, Sérsic profile parameters, and rest-frame colours of these LSBs. We compare the photometrically-derived star formation histories, mass-weighted ages, and dust attenuations of these galaxies with a high surface brightness (HSB) sample at similar redshift and a lower redshift ($z_{\mathrm{phot}}<0.4$) LSB sample, all of which have stellar masses $\lesssim 10^8{M}_{\odot }$. We find that all samples have low star formation (SFR${}_{100}\lesssim 0.01$ $M_{\odot }$ yr${}^{-1}$). The higher redshift LSBs and HSBs have similar star formation histories which show that the LSBs and HSBs possibly come from the same progenitors at $z\gtrsim 2$, though the histories are not well constrained for the LSB samples. The LSBs appear to have minimal dust, with most of our LSB samples showing $A_V<1$ mag. JWST has pushed our understanding of LSBs beyond the local Universe.