The Highest-redshift Balmer Breaks as a Test of ΛCDM

Charles L. Steinhardt; Albert Sneppen; Thorbjørn Clausen; Harley B. Katz; Martin P. Rey; Jonas Stahlschmidt

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad3afb

The Highest-redshift Balmer Breaks as a Test of ΛCDM

Charles L. Steinhardt, Albert Sneppen, Thorbjørn Clausen, Harley B. Katz, Martin P. Rey, Jonas Stahlschmidt

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6 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Recent studies have reported tension between the presence of luminous, high-redshift galaxies and the halo mass functions predicted by standard cosmology. Here, an improved test is proposed using the presence of high-redshift Balmer breaks to probe the formation of early 10 ⁴-10 ⁵ M _⊙ baryonic minihalos. Unlike previous tests, this does not depend upon the mass-to-light ratio and has only a slight dependence upon the metallicity, stellar initial mass function, and star formation history, which are all weakly constrained at high redshift. We show that the strongest Balmer breaks allowed at z = 9 using the simplest ΛCDM cosmological model would allow a D ₄₀₀₀ as high as 1.26 under idealized circumstances and D ₄₀₀₀ ≤ 1.14 including realistic feedback models. Since current photometric template fitting to JWST sources infers the existence of stronger Balmer breaks out to z ≳ 11, upcoming spectroscopic follow-up will either demonstrate those templates are invalid at high redshift or imply new physics beyond “vanilla” ΛCDM.

Original language	English
Article number	172
Journal	The Astrophysical Journal
Volume	967
Issue number	2
Early online date	30 May 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad3afb
Publication status	Published - 1 Jun 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Funding

The authors would like to thank Sebastien Aagaard, Kit Boyett, Lukas Furtak, Zoltan Haiman, Thomas Harvey, Troels Haugb\u00F8lle, Anne Hutter, Nicolas Laporte, Tobias Looser, Bahram Mobasher, Vadim Rusakov, Luka Vujeva, and Darach Watson for helpful comments and discussions. The Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant No. 140. M.R. is supported by the Beecroft Fellowship funded by Adrian Beecroft.

Funders	Funder number
Danmarks Grundforskningsfond	140

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10.3847/1538-4357/ad3afb

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title = "The Highest-redshift Balmer Breaks as a Test of ΛCDM",

abstract = "Recent studies have reported tension between the presence of luminous, high-redshift galaxies and the halo mass functions predicted by standard cosmology. Here, an improved test is proposed using the presence of high-redshift Balmer breaks to probe the formation of early 10 4-10 5 M ⊙ baryonic minihalos. Unlike previous tests, this does not depend upon the mass-to-light ratio and has only a slight dependence upon the metallicity, stellar initial mass function, and star formation history, which are all weakly constrained at high redshift. We show that the strongest Balmer breaks allowed at z = 9 using the simplest ΛCDM cosmological model would allow a D 4000 as high as 1.26 under idealized circumstances and D 4000 ≤ 1.14 including realistic feedback models. Since current photometric template fitting to JWST sources infers the existence of stronger Balmer breaks out to z ≳ 11, upcoming spectroscopic follow-up will either demonstrate those templates are invalid at high redshift or imply new physics beyond “vanilla” ΛCDM.",

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AU - Sneppen, Albert

AU - Clausen, Thorbjørn

AU - Katz, Harley B.

AU - Rey, Martin P.

AU - Stahlschmidt, Jonas

PY - 2024/6/1

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N2 - Recent studies have reported tension between the presence of luminous, high-redshift galaxies and the halo mass functions predicted by standard cosmology. Here, an improved test is proposed using the presence of high-redshift Balmer breaks to probe the formation of early 10 4-10 5 M ⊙ baryonic minihalos. Unlike previous tests, this does not depend upon the mass-to-light ratio and has only a slight dependence upon the metallicity, stellar initial mass function, and star formation history, which are all weakly constrained at high redshift. We show that the strongest Balmer breaks allowed at z = 9 using the simplest ΛCDM cosmological model would allow a D 4000 as high as 1.26 under idealized circumstances and D 4000 ≤ 1.14 including realistic feedback models. Since current photometric template fitting to JWST sources infers the existence of stronger Balmer breaks out to z ≳ 11, upcoming spectroscopic follow-up will either demonstrate those templates are invalid at high redshift or imply new physics beyond “vanilla” ΛCDM.

AB - Recent studies have reported tension between the presence of luminous, high-redshift galaxies and the halo mass functions predicted by standard cosmology. Here, an improved test is proposed using the presence of high-redshift Balmer breaks to probe the formation of early 10 4-10 5 M ⊙ baryonic minihalos. Unlike previous tests, this does not depend upon the mass-to-light ratio and has only a slight dependence upon the metallicity, stellar initial mass function, and star formation history, which are all weakly constrained at high redshift. We show that the strongest Balmer breaks allowed at z = 9 using the simplest ΛCDM cosmological model would allow a D 4000 as high as 1.26 under idealized circumstances and D 4000 ≤ 1.14 including realistic feedback models. Since current photometric template fitting to JWST sources infers the existence of stronger Balmer breaks out to z ≳ 11, upcoming spectroscopic follow-up will either demonstrate those templates are invalid at high redshift or imply new physics beyond “vanilla” ΛCDM.

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The Highest-redshift Balmer Breaks as a Test of ΛCDM

Abstract

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