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# The GREATS H$$\beta$$+[OIII] Luminosity Function and Galaxy Properties at $$\mathbf{z\sim8}$$: Walking the Way of JWST

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### Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope will allow to spectroscopically study an unprecedented number of galaxies deep into the reionization era, notably by detecting [OIII] and H$$\beta$$ nebular emission lines. To efficiently prepare such observations, we photometrically select a large sample of galaxies at $$z\sim8$$ and study their rest-frame optical emission lines. Combining data from the GOODS Re-ionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer (GREATS) survey and from HST, we perform spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting, using synthetic SEDs from a large grid of photoionization models. The deep Spitzer/IRAC data combined with our models exploring a large parameter space enables to constrain the [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ fluxes and equivalent widths for our sample, as well as the average physical properties of $$z\sim8$$ galaxies, such as the ionizing photon production efficiency with $$\log(\xi_\mathrm{ion}/\mathrm{erg}^{-1}\hspace{1mm}\mathrm{Hz})\geq25.77$$. We find a relatively tight correlation between the [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ and UV luminosity, which we use to derive for the first time the [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ luminosity function (LF) at $$z\sim8$$. The $$z\sim8$$ [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ LF is higher at all luminosities compared to lower redshift, as opposed to the UV LF, due to an increase of the [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ luminosity at a given UV luminosity from $$z\sim3$$ to $$z\sim8$$. Finally, using the [OIII]+H$$\beta$$ LF, we make predictions for JWST/NIRSpec number counts of $$z\sim8$$ galaxies. We find that the current wide-area extragalactic legacy fields are too shallow to use JWST at maximal efficiency for $$z\sim8$$ spectroscopy even at 1hr depth and JWST pre-imaging to $$\gtrsim30$$ mag will be required.

### Most cited references1

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### Overview of the near-infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument on-board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

(2007)
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### Author and article information

###### Journal
22 March 2019
###### Article
1903.09649