The DAWN JWST Archive: A spectroscopically-informed population study of the physical properties of galaxies at z>2

arXiv:2610.15901 · astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-10-11 · Read on arXiv

astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-10-11

Updated: 2026-10-11

Comments: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A)

Code: https://github.com/gbrammer/grizli

Project page: https://dawn-cph.github.io/dja

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Charting the evolution of star-formation, stellar mass and dust build-up over cosmic time relies on the accurate characterisation of the stellar population properties of high redshift galaxies.

Abstract

Charting the evolution of star-formation, stellar mass and dust build-up over cosmic time relies on the accurate characterisation of the stellar population properties of high redshift galaxies. We present a catalogue of spectroscopically derived physical properties for 12,000 galaxies at z>2, with archival JWST/NIRSpec PRISM spectroscopy and JWST/NIRCam imaging from the DAWN JWST Archive. We present a custom version of the SED fitting code BAGPIPES, used to perform joint spectrophotometric modelling of PRISM spectra and broadband NIRCam photometry. In doing so, we publicly release a science-ready catalogue of the physical properties of galaxies beyond cosmic noon. We report key physical properties, such as stellar masses, star-formation rates (SFR) and timescales, and V-band dust attenuation (Av). We further probe the recent star-formation histories (SFH) of galaxies via their SFRs on 3 Myr, 10 Myr, and 100 Myr timescales, capturing both rising and falling recent SFHs. Through dust-corrected ugi colour-colour diagrams of massive galaxies, we show how quiescent and dusty galaxies populate this colour space at z>2, with galaxies experiencing a recent downturn in star-formation occupying distinct parameter space. We also study the dustiest galaxies in our sample, showing that they are preferentially more massive and strongly star-forming relative to the parent sample, residing on the high-mass end of the star-forming main-sequence. The slope of the attenuation curve has a strong dependence on Av, varying from steep to shallow as the dust attenuation increases and the specific star-formation rate decreases. Our findings show that the unparalleled number statistics of this catalogue of spectroscopically derived stellar population properties uniquely enables the study star-formation, quenching and dust properties of galaxies from cosmic noon to cosmic dawn.

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