The Luminosity Function of Ultrafaint Trans-Neptunian Objects Detected by JWST
Abstract
We present a definitive discovery of 27 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) using the Near-Infrared Camera aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). By employing a shift-and-stack technique and a machine learning network geared specifically to identifying false-positive detections in JWST images produced through the shift-and-stack process, we achieved a 40% detection threshold of mF150W2 = 28.8 mag (corresponding to mr ∼ 29.8 mag) across a sky area of 0.05 deg2. This marks the deepest solar system survey to date, reaching magnitudes that allow us to explore never-before-seen regions of the TNO size distribution. Our faintest detection has mF150W2 = 29.3 mag and a diameter of ∼10 km (assuming 15% albedo). Within our sample, we find that both the cold and hot TNO subpopulations exhibit a power-law slope. The distribution of apparent magnitudes of our nominal sample (detections at all epochs) is well fit by a single power law dN/dm ∝ 10αm with α=0.29−0.07+0.08 . The dynamically hot and cold subsamples in our discovery set are consistent with the same power law, suggesting that the planetesimal formation process yields similar slopes despite the differing disk conditions at the presumed ∼25 and ∼45 au formation regions of the two populations.