Observational analysis identifies the role of dust-obscured galaxies at z>4, highlighting significant findings in the SCUBADive dataset.
The relative fraction of obscured galaxies at $z>4$ compared to lower redshifts remains highly uncertain as accurate bookkeeping of the dust-obscured component proves difficult. We address this shortcoming with SCUBADive, a compilation of the JWST counterparts of (sub-)millimeter galaxies in COSMOS-Web, in order to further analyze the distribution and properties of massive dust-obscured galaxies at early times. In this paper, we present a subset of SCUBADive, focusing on 60 ``dark'' galaxies that dropout at 1.5. Motivated by JWST observations of AzTECC71, a far-infrared bright F150W-dropout with zₚₕₒₜ=5.7+0.8-0.7, we complete a systematic search of F150W-dropouts with SCUBA-2 and ALMA detections to find more candidate high redshift dusty galaxies. Within our subsample, 16 are most similar to AzTECC71 due to fainter F444W magnitudes ($>24$\,mag) and lack of counterparts in COSMOS2020. Despite high star formation rates (SFR=450⁺⁹²⁰₋₃₂₀\,\,yr⁻¹) and large stellar masses (log₁₀()=11.2+0.5-0.6\,) on average, these galaxies may not be particularly extreme for their presumed epochs according to offsets from the main sequence. We find that heavily obscured galaxies, which would be missed by pre-JWST optical imaging campaigns, comprise 20% of galaxies across mass bins and potentially contribute up to 60% at the very high mass end (log₁₀(/)$>11.5$) of the $z>4$ stellar mass function.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Manning et al. (2025) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: