Candidate Galaxies at z ~ 11.3--21.8 and beyond: results from JWST's public data taken in its first year

Understand

We present a systematic search of candidate galaxies at z > 11.3 using the public Near Infrared Camera data taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in its Cycle 1, which include six blank fields totalling 386 sq.arcmin and two lensing cluster fields totalling 48 sq.arcmin.

• The candidates are selected as F150W, F200W and F277W dropouts, which correspond to z ~ 12.7 (11.3 < z < 15.4), 17.3 (15.4 < z < 21.8) and 24.7 (21.8 < z < 28.3), respectively.
• Our sample consists of 123 F150W dropouts, 52 F200W dropouts and 32 F277W dropouts, which is the largest candidate galaxy sample probing the highest redshift range to date.
• The F150W and F200W dropouts have sufficient photometric information that allows contaminant rejection, which we do by fitting to their spectrum energy distributions.