- Jin, Shuowen;
- Sillassen, Nikolaj B;
- Magdis, Georgios E;
- Brinch, Malte;
- Shuntov, Marko;
- Brammer, Gabriel;
- Gobat, Raphael;
- Valentino, Francesco;
- Carnall, Adam C;
- Lee, Minju;
- Vijayan, Aswin P;
- Gillman, Steven;
- Kokorev, Vasily;
- Bail, Aurélien Le;
- Greve, Thomas R;
- Gullberg, Bitten;
- Gould, Katriona ML;
- Toft, Sune
We report the discovery of a large-scale structure at z=3.44 revealed by JWST
data in the Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field. This structure, called the Cosmic
Vine, consists of 20 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts at 3.4370\%$).
Comparisons with simulations suggest that the Cosmic Vine would form a cluster
with halo mass $M_{\rm halo}>10^{14}M_\odot$ at z=0, and the two massive
galaxies are likely forming the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). The results
unambiguously reveal that massive quiescent galaxies can form in growing
large-scale structures at z>3, thus disfavoring the environmental quenching
mechanisms that require a virialized cluster core. Instead, as suggested by the
interacting and bulge-dominated morphologies, the two galaxies are likely
quenched by merger-triggered starburst or active galactic nucleus (AGN)
feedback before falling into a cluster core. Moreover, we found that the
observed specific star formation rates of massive quiescent galaxies in z>3
dense environments are one to two orders of magnitude lower than that of the
BCGs in the TNG300 simulation. This discrepancy potentially poses a challenge
to the models of massive cluster galaxy formation. Future studies comparing a
large sample with dedicated cluster simulations are required to solve the
problem.