Magnification Bias of Distant Galaxies in the Hubble Frontier Fields: Testing Wave vs. Particle Dark Matter Predictions

TL;DR

This study uses Hubble Frontier Fields to measure the distribution of high-redshift galaxies, revealing a negative magnification bias that supports Bose-Einstein condensate dark matter and indicating a decline in galaxy numbers at very high redshifts.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of magnification bias at high redshift, testing dark matter models and revealing a potential link to reionization history.

Findings

Negative magnification bias supports BEC dark matter model

Detected a decline in galaxy density at z > 8

Implications for JWST observations at z > 10

Abstract

Acting as powerful gravitational lenses, the strong lensing galaxy clusters of the deep Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) program permit access to lower-luminosity galaxies lying at higher redshifts than hitherto possible. We analyzed the HFF to measure the volume density of Lyman-break galaxies at $z > 4.75$ by identifying a complete and reliable sample up to $z \simeq 10$. A marked deficit of such galaxies was uncovered in the highly magnified regions of the clusters relative to their outskirts, implying that the magnification of the sky area dominates over additional faint galaxies magnified above the flux limit. This negative magnification bias is consistent with a slow rollover at the faint end of the UV luminosity function, and indicates a preference for Bose-Einstein condensate dark matter with a light boson mass of $m_\mathrm{B} \simeq 10^{-22} \, \mathrm{eV}$ over standard cold dark matter. We emphasize that measuring the magnification bias requires no correction for multiply lensed images (with typically three or more images per source), whereas directly reconstructing the luminosity function will lead to an overestimate unless such images can be exhaustively matched up, especially at the faint end that is accessible only in the strongly lensed regions. In addition, we detected a distinctive downward transition in galaxy number density at $z \gtrsim 8$, which may be linked to the relatively late reionization reported by Planck. Our results suggests that JWST will likely peer into an "abyss" with essentially no galaxies detected in deep NIR imaging at $z > 10$.