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The Sunburst Arc with JWST: I. Detection of Wolf-Rayet stars injecting nitrogen into a low-metallicity, z = 2.37 proto-globular cluster leaking ionizing photons
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Department of Astronomy. Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmo Particle Physics (OKC).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9204-3256
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Number of Authors: 162024 (English)In: Astronomy and Astrophysics, ISSN 0004-6361, E-ISSN 1432-0746, Vol. 690, article id A269Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

We report the detection of a population of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in the Sunburst Arc, a strongly gravitationally lensed galaxy at redshift z = 2.37. As the brightest known lensed galaxy, the Sunburst Arc has become an important cosmic laboratory for studying star and cluster formation, Lyman α (Lyα) radiative transfer, and Lyman continuum (LyC) escape. Here, we present the first results of JWST/NIRSpec IFU observations of the Sunburst Arc, focusing on a stacked spectrum of the 12-fold imaged Sunburst LyC-emitting (LCE) cluster. In agreement with previous studies, we find that the Sunburst LCE cluster is a very massive, compact star cluster with Mdyn = (9 ± 1)×106M. Our age estimate of 4.2–4.5 Myr is much larger than the crossing time of tcross = 183 ± 9 kyr, indicating that the cluster is dynamically evolved and consistent with it being gravitationally bound. We find a significant nitrogen enhancement of the low ionization state interstellar medium (ISM), with log(N/O) =  − 0.74 ± 0.09, which is ≈0.8 dex above typical values for H II regions of a similar metallicity in the local Universe. We find broad stellar emission complexes around He IIλ4686 and C IVλ5808 with associated nitrogen emission; this is the first time WR signatures have been directly observed at redshifts above ∼0.5. The strength of the WR signatures cannot be reproduced by stellar population models that only include single-star evolution. While models with binary evolution better match the WR features, they still struggle to reproduce the nitrogen-enhanced WR features. JWST reveals the Sunburst LCE cluster to be a highly ionized proto-globular cluster with low oxygen abundance and extreme nitrogen enhancement that hosts a population of WR stars, likely including a previously suggested population of very massive stars (VMSs), which together are rapidly enriching the surrounding medium.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024. Vol. 690, article id A269
Keywords [en]
Galaxies: evolution, Galaxies: ISM, Galaxies: star clusters: general, Galaxies: starburst, Stars: Wolf-Rayet
National Category
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-237291DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202450359ISI: 001334189800001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85207344507OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-237291DiVA, id: diva2:1926306
Available from: 2025-01-10 Created: 2025-01-10 Last updated: 2025-01-10Bibliographically approved

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Rivera-Thorsen, Thøger EmilChoe, SuhyeonHayes, MatthewAdamo, Angela

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