Abstract
Early JWST observations that targeted so-called double-break sources
(attributed to Lyman and Balmer breaks at $z>7$), reported a previously unknown
population of very massive, evolved high-redshift galaxies. This surprising
discovery led to a flurry of attempts to explain these objects' unexpected
existence including invoking alternatives to the standard $Łambda$CDM
cosmological paradigm. To test these early results, we adopted the same
double-break candidate galaxy selection criteria to search for such objects in
the JWST images of the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS), and
found a sample of 19 sources over five independent CANUCS fields that cover a
total effective area of $\sim60\,$arcmin$^2$ at $z\sim8$. However, (1) our SED
fits do not yield exceptionally high stellar masses for our candidates, while
(2) spectroscopy of five of the candidates shows that while all five are at
high redshifts, their red colours are due to high-EW emission lines in
star-forming galaxies rather than Balmer breaks in massive, evolved systems.
Additionally, (3) field-to-field variance leads to differences of $1.5$
dex in the maximum stellar masses measured in the different fields, suggesting
that the early single-field JWST observations may have suffered from cosmic
variance and/or sample bias. Finally, (4) we show that the presence of even a
single massive outlier can dominate conclusions from small samples such as
those in early JWST observations. In conclusion, we find that the double-break
sources in CANUCS are not sufficiently massive or numerous to warrant
questioning the standard $Łambda$CDM paradigm.
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