UNCOVER/MegaScience Finds Uniform and Highly Bursty Star Formation at 3 < z < 9, consistent with the High-Redshift UV Luminosity Function

arXiv (Cornell University) 2026 Preprint Open access

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Authors: Ikki Mitsuhashi, Katherine A. Suess, Joel Leja, Rachel Bezanson, Jenny E. Greene, Emilie Burnham, Gourav Khullar, Abby Mintz, Themiya Nanayakkara, Karl Glazebrook, Sedona H. Price, David J. Setton
+15 more Bingjie Wang, John R. Weaver, Hakim Atek, Pratika Dayal, Robert Feldmann, Seiji Fujimoto, Lukas J. Furtak, Brian Lorenz, Natalia Porraz Barrera, Ivo Labbe, Gabriel Brammer, Sam E. Cutler, Richard Pan, Katherine E. Whitaker, the UNCOVER/MegaScience team
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2601.16284
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Star formation timescales are key to understanding fundamental physics like feedback mechanisms, as well as the abundance of bright galaxies at $z>10$. We investigate galaxy star formation histories (SFHs) and their evolution across $z\sim3$--9 by measuring the line-to-UV ratio (\rline) and line equivalent width (EW) of \hanii\ and \oiiihb\ directly from UNCOVER/MegaScience spectro-photometry without relying on a specific SFH or nebular line modeling. Our photometric measurements recover \rline\ and EW to $

Fields of Study & Subjects

Galaxies: Formation Evolution Phenomena Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies Stellar planetary and galactic studies

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
22 January 2026
Document type
Preprint