The JWST Extragalactic Mock Catalog: Modeling galaxy populations from the UV through the near-IR over thirteen billion years of cosmic history

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive phenomenological model for galaxy evolution from redshift 0.2 to 15, producing mock catalogs to aid future JWST surveys and improve understanding of high-redshift galaxy populations.

Contribution

It presents a novel, self-consistent model that simulates galaxy properties across cosmic history, incorporating stellar, gas, and dust emission, and provides publicly available mock catalogs for JWST survey planning.

Findings

Predicts thousands of galaxies at z>6 detectable by JWST NIRCam.

Forecasts tens of galaxies at z>10 within the JADES survey.

Enables constraints on UV luminosity function evolution at z>8.

Abstract

We present an original phenomenological model to describe the evolution of galaxy number counts, morphologies, and spectral energy distributions across a wide range of redshifts (0.2<z<15) and stellar masses [Log10 M/Msun >6]. Our model follows observed mass and luminosity functions of both star-forming and quiescent galaxies, and reproduces the redshift evolution of colors, sizes, star-formation and chemical properties of the observed galaxy population. Unlike other existing approaches, our model includes a self-consistent treatment of stellar and photoionized gas emission and dust attenuation based on the BEAGLE tool. The mock galaxy catalogs generated with our new model can be used to simulate and optimize extragalactic surveys with future facilities such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and to enable critical assessments of analysis procedures, interpretation tools, and measurement systematics for both photometric and spectroscopic data. As a first application of this work, we make predictions for the upcoming JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a joint program of the JWST/NIRCam and NIRSpec Guaranteed Time Observations teams. We show that JADES will detect, with NIRCam imaging, thousands of galaxies at z>6, and tens at z>10 at m_AB<30 (5-sigma) within the 236 arcmin^2 of the survey. The JADES data will enable accurate constraints on the evolution of the UV luminosity function at z>8, and resolve the current debate about the rate of evolution of galaxies at z>8. Ready to use mock catalogs and software to generate new realizations are publicly available as the JAdes extraGalactic Ultradeep Artificial Realizations (JAGUAR) package.