Low-mass bursty galaxies in JADES efficiently produce ionising photons and could represent the main drivers of reionisation

Understand

We study galaxies in JADES Deep to study the evolution of the ionising photon production efficiency, $\xi_{\rm{ion}}$, observed to increase with redshift.

• We estimate $\xi_{\rm{ion}}$ for a sample of 677 galaxies at $z \sim 4 - 9$ using NIRCam photometry.
• Specifically, combinations of the medium and wide bands F335M-F356W and F410M-F444W to constrain emission lines that trace $\xi_{\rm{ion}}$: H$\alpha$ and [OIII].
• Additionally, we use the spectral energy distribution fitting code \texttt{Prospector} to fit all available photometry and infer galaxy properties.