JWST observes the assembly of a massive galaxy at z ∼ 4

The Open Journal of Astrophysics Maynooth University 9 (2026)

Authors:

Aayush Saxena, Roderik A Overzier, Catarina Aydar, Jianwei Lyu, George H Rieke, Victoria Reynaldi, Montserrat Villar-Martín, Krisztina Éva Gabányi, Kenneth J Duncan, Sándor Frey, Andrew Humphrey, George Miley, Laura Pentericci, Krisztina Perger, Huub Röttgering, Philip Best, Sarah EI Bosman, Gyorgy Mező, Masafusa Onoue, Zsolt Paragi, Bram Venemans

Abstract:

We present JWST observations of the radio galaxy TGSSJ1530+1049, spectroscopically confirmed at z = 4.0 . NIRCam images and NIRSpec/IFU spectroscopy ( R = 2700 ) show that TGSSJ1530+1049 is part of one of the densest-known structures of continuum and line-emitting objects found at these redshifts. NIRCam images show a number of distinct continuum objects and evidence of interactions traced by diffuse emission, and the NIRSpec IFU cube reveals further strong line emitting regions. We identify six continuum and four additional strong Halpha emitting sources with weaker or no underlying continuum within the 3’‘x3’’ IFU field. From spatial alignment with high-resolution radio data and emission line profiles, the radio AGN host galaxy is clearly identified. The bright Halpha emission (but not the optical components) is distributed remarkably linearly along the radio axis, suggestive of a biconical illumination zone by a central obscured AGN. The emission line kinematics indicate jet-gas interactions on scales of a few kpc. However, due to large relative velocities and presence of underlying continuum, the alignment with the radio structure appears to be, at least partly, caused by a particular configuration of interacting galaxies. At least four objects within a 10x10 (projected) kpc area which includes the radio source have high stellar masses (log( M / M ) > 10.3 ) and star formation rates in the range 70-163 M yr. Using a stellar mass-based analysis, we predict a total dark matter halo mass of 10 13 M . Based on the physical separations and velocity differences between the galaxies, it is expected that these galaxies will merge to form a massive galaxy within a few Gyr. The system qualitatively resembles the forming brightest cluster galaxies in cosmological simulations that form early through a rapid succession of mergers.

MIGHTEE-H I: Mass Models and Dark Matter properties

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2026) stag531

Authors:

Anastasia A Ponomareva, PE Mancera Piña, AA Vărăşteanu, M Glowacki, H Desmond, MJ Jarvis, T Yasin, I Heywood, N Maddox, EAK Adams, M Baes, A Gebek, S Kurapati, M Maksymowicz-Maciata, KA Oman, H Pan, I Prandoni, SHA Rajohnson, I Ruffa, K Spekkens

Abstract:

Measuring galaxy rotation curves is critical for inferring the properties of dark-matter haloes in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) paradigm. We present H i rotation curves and mass models for 20 galaxies from the MIGHTEE survey. Using extended H i kinematics, we construct resolved mass models that include stellar, gaseous, and dark-matter components. Stellar masses are derived using 3.6 μm imaging under fixed mass-to-light ratio (ϒ* = M/L) assumptions and are complemented, for the first time for a H I-selected sample, by spatially resolved M/L, obtained from multi-wavelength SED fitting. We examine the ratio of baryonic to observed rotation velocity (Vbar/Vobs) at the characteristic radius R2.2. Adopting a fixed ϒ⋆ = 0.5 M⊙/L⊙ yields a clear dependence of V2.2/Vobs on galaxy luminosity, while adopting ϒ⋆ = 0.2 M⊙/L⊙ substantially weakens this trend. In contrast, the resolved M/L analysis preserves the luminosity dependence while modifying the stellar contribution on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis, providing a more accurate representation of the underlying relation. We model the dark-matter haloes using Navarro–Frenk–White profiles and find that the different assumptions for a fixed a M/L systematically shift galaxies relative to the theoretical stellar-to-halo mass and baryonic-to-halo mass relations, while the spatially varying M/L yields the closest agreement with theoretical benchmarks within ΛCDM. We therefore demonstrate that future investigations of the dark matter properties of galaxies using rotation curves need to account for varying M/L across individual galaxy profiles and between galaxies in order to obtain accurate measurements of the dark matter, and therefore test ΛCDM.

megatron: the environments of Population III stars at Cosmic Dawn and their connection to present-day galaxies

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 548:1 (2026) stag529

Authors:

Anatole Storck, Harley Katz, Julien Devriendt, Adrianne Slyz, Corentin Cadiou, Nicholas Choustikov, Martin P Rey, Aayush Saxena, Oscar Agertz, Taysun Kimm

Abstract:

We present results of Population III (Pop III) formation in the megatron suite of simulations, which self-consistently follows radiation and non-equilibrium chemistry, and resolves gas at near-pc resolution in a Milky Way-mass progenitor at Cosmic Dawn. While the very first Pop III stars form in haloes with masses well below the atomic cooling limit, the majority of Pop III stars form in more massive systems above the K atomic cooling threshold as a Lyman–Werner (LW) background of is rapidly established. We find that the global Pop III star formation rate stabilizes to a value of at . Among the three processes that quench Pop III star formation in minihaloes, the LW background, gas starvation, and external chemical enrichment, the LW background is most important. A small fraction of haloes undergo multiple episodes of Pop III star formation when the earlier forming stars all directly collapse to black holes. If the haloes become massive enough, they can form up to Pop III stars in a single burst, which may be observable by James Webb Space Telescope with moderate gravitational lensing. Pop III stars form at a wide range of distances from UV-bright galaxies, with only per cent of Pop III stars forming within the virial radius of galaxies with . Finally, by tracking Pop III star remnants down to , we find that per cent reside in the stellar halo of our simulated Milky Way analogue, while the remainder are gravitationally bound to lower mass systems, including satellite haloes.

No evidence for p- or d-wave dark matter annihilation from local large-scale structure

Physical Review D American Physical Society (APS) 113:6 (2026) 063539

Authors:

A Kostić, DJ Bartlett, H Desmond

Abstract:

If dark matter annihilates into standard model particles with a cross section which is velocity dependent, then Local Group dwarf galaxies will not be the best place to search for the resulting gamma ray emission. A greater flux would be produced by more distant and massive halos, with larger velocity dispersions. We construct full-sky predictions for the gamma ray emission from galaxy- and cluster-mass halos within 200 Mpc using a suite of constrained N -body simulations () based on the Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies algorithm. Comparing to observations from the Large Area Telescope and marginalizing over reconstruction uncertainties and other astrophysical contributions to the flux, we obtain constraints on the cross section which are 2 (7) orders of magnitude tighter than those obtained from dwarf spheroidals for p -wave ( d -wave) annihilation. We find no evidence for either type of annihilation from dark matter particles with masses in the range m χ = 2 500 GeV / c 2 , for any channel. As an example, for annihilations producing bottom quarks with m χ = 10 GeV / c 2 , we find a 1 < 2.4 × 10 21 cm 3 s 1 and a 2 < 3.0 × 10 18 cm 3 s 1 at 95% confidence, where the product of the cross section, σ , and relative particle velocity, v , is given by σ v = a ( v / c ) 2 and = 1 , 2 for p - and d -wave annihilation, respectively. Our bounds, although failing to exclude the thermal relic cross section for velocity-dependent annihilation channels, are among the tightest to date.

Skew spectra: A generalization to spin s

Physical Review D American Physical Society (APS) 113:6 (2026) 063563

Authors:

Alexander Roskill, Sara Maleubre, David Alonso, Pedro G Ferreira

Abstract:

Skew spectra allow us to extract non-Gaussian information by taking the square of a map and finding the power spectrum of this new map with the original map. This allows us to use much of the infrastructure of power spectra and avoid the intricacies of estimating three point statistics. In this paper we present the first extension of skew spectra to arbitrary spin- s fields, as a means to extract non-Gaussian information efficiently from cosmological datasets like cosmic shear or cosmic microwave background polarization. We apply the formalism to weak lensing in the context of large scale structure, and discuss different ways of combining fields to build skew spectra, all while avoiding the problems associated with mass mapping. We provide plots of these new statistics for Λ cold dark matter and vary cosmological parameters.