How Bursty is Star Formation at z>5?

TL;DR

This study models bursty star formation at high redshifts using a simple phenomenological approach, showing that a quiescence period of about 100 Myrs and a power-law burst mass distribution can explain observed galaxy properties.

Contribution

It introduces a minimalistic model of bursty star formation at z>5 that fits JWST data without requiring mergers or dust, highlighting the importance of episodic star formation.

Findings

A quiescence period of ~100 Myrs fits the data.

Stellar mass growth is approximately linear from z=12 to z=5.

Burst mass distribution follows a power-law with slope ~-2.

Abstract

Motivated by observational evidence from JWST and theoretical results from cosmological simulations, we use a simple parametric, phenomenological model to test to what extent bursty star formation with standard Initial Mass Function, no continuous star formation, no mergers, \mr{and no dust} can account for the observed properties in the $M_{UV}$ vs $M_*$ plane of galaxies at redshifts $z>5$. We find that the simplest model that fits the data has a quiescence period between bursts $\Delta t \sim 100$~Myrs and the stellar mass in each galaxy grows linearly as a function of time from $z=12$ to $z=5$ (i.e., repeated bursts in each galaxy produce approximately equal mass in stars). The distribution of burst masses across different galaxies follows a power-law $dN/dM_* \propto M_*^\alpha$ with slope $\alpha \sim -2$. At $z>9-10$ the observed galaxy population typically had only one or two bursts of stars formation, hence the observed stellar masses at these redshifts (reaching $M_* \sim 10^{10}$~M$_\odot$), roughly represent the distribution of masses formed in one burst.