PRISMS. U37126, a very blue, ISM-naked starburst at z=10.255 with nearly 100% Lyman continuum escape fraction
astro-ph.GA
/ Authors
R. Marques-Chaves, J. Álvarez-Márquez, L. Colina, S. Kendrew, Abdurro'uf, C. Blanco-Prieto, L. A. Boogaard, M. Castellano, K. I. Caputi, A. Crespo-Gomez
and 24 more authors
A. Fontana, Y. Fudamoto, S. Fujimoto, M. García-Marín, Y. Harikane, S. Harish, T. Hashimoto, T. Hsiao, E. Iani, A. K. Inoue, D. Langeroodi, R. Lin, J. Melinder, L. Napolitano, G. Ostlin, P. G. Pérez-González, C. Prieto-Jiménez, P. Rinaldi, B. Rodríguez Del Pino, P. Santini, Y. Sugahara, A. Varo-O'ferral, G. Wright
/ Abstract
We present very deep (~11h) JWST/MIRI low-resolution spectroscopy of the rest-frame optical emission of U37126, a UV-bright (M_UV ~ -20), mildly lensed ($μ\simeq 2.2$) galaxy at z=10.255. The continuum emission is well detected in both NIRSpec and MIRI spectra, yet no nebular recombination or metal emission lines are observed (EW(Hbeta+[OIII])<300A and EW(Halpha)<400A, at 3sigma). Combined with the exceptionally blue UV continuum slope, beta_UV ~ -2.9, and weak/flat Balmer break, these constraints indicate a stellar population dominated by very young and massive stars with a strongly suppressed nebular contribution. Comparisons with synthetic stellar population models indicate that U37126 requires both a very high ionizing photon production efficiency, log(Xi_ion / Hz erg^-1) ~ 25.75, and a nearly unit LyC escape fraction, of fesc>86% (3sigma) based on Halpha flux limit and fesc=0.94+/-0.06 derived independently from SED fitting. The best-fit SED yields a (de-lensed) stellar mass of Mstar ~ 10^7.8 Msun and a star-formation rate of SFR~10Msun/yr (sSFR~160 Gyr^-1), that along with its very compact size, reff~61pc, yields very high stellar mass and star-formation-rate surface densities, Sigma_M ~ 3x10^3 Msun/pc^2 and Sigma_SFR ~ 400 Msun/yr/kpc^2. Together with the lack of detectable nebular emission, these properties suggest that U37126 is undergoing an ``ISM-naked'' starburst phase, possibly driven by an extremely efficient gas-to-star conversion followed by strong feedback that has cleared the remaining gas from its stellar core, allowing most LyC photons to escape. Finally, we show that even a small fraction of galaxies like U37126 (~ 3%-6%), with extreme LyC production and escape, could contribute disproportionately (~ 50%-100%) to the ionizing photon budget during cosmic reionization.