A Strongly Lensed Ultra-faint Arc at $z\approx 10$ with an F200W excess in Abell S1063

Abstract

Strong gravitational lensing provides a powerful route to probing intrinsically faint galaxies during the first few hundred million years of cosmic history. In this Letter, we report the identification of GAR10, a highly magnified F115W-dropout galaxy at $z\approx 10$ in the Abell S1063 cluster field, using deep JWST/NIRCam imaging from the GLIMPSE and GO-1840 programs. The source shows an unusually blue ultraviolet (UV) continuum and a significant F200W excess relative to adjacent bands. Under our high-magnification lensing solution, we infer a median magnification of $\hat{I}¼=43_{-20}^{+78}$, corresponding to an intrinsic UV magnitude of $M_{\mathrm{UV}}\approx -15.8$. We use exploratory Prospector SED modeling to examine two physically motivated interpretations of the observed photometry. In Case I, GAR10 is described by an extremely metal-poor, continuum-dominated stellar population at $z=10.75_{-0.34}^{+0.41}$, with a blue UV slope of ${\hat{I}}^2=-2.92\pm 0.12$ and a low metallicity of $\log (Z/Z_{\odot })=-3.56_{-0.85}^{+0.65}$, consistent with an extremely metal-poor or Pop III-like continuum-dominated interpretation under the adopted priors. In Case II, GAR10 is interpreted as an extremely young (1--3 Myr), high-ionization galaxy at $z=10.45_{-0.21}^{+0.11}$, in which the F200W excess is produced by intense rest-frame UV emission lines, including CIV, HeII, and CIII]. Both cases can partially reproduce the current photometry within the adopted priors, but they imply distinct ionizing sources, enrichment histories, and possible contributions to cosmic reionization. GAR10 therefore represents a rare laboratory for studying ultra-faint galaxy formation at cosmic dawn. Future JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy will be essential to distinguishing between the steep continuum and emission-line origins of the F200W excess.

11 pages, 4 figures, 1 table