ALMA Band 3 Selection of Ultra-high Redshift Dropouts: The final challenge to ΛCDM

Abstract: The Lyman-break technique has been used to successfully identify high-redshift candidates in broad-band photometric data in the rest-frame optical and NIR using the dropout technique. We pioneer the application of this technique to new wavelength regimes, and search for dropouts in combined ALMA and JWST data. We find a candidate that is undetected in NIRCam imaging including and blueward of the F444W filter, but clearly identified in ALMA band 3. Assuming this is a Lyman-break candidate, we measure a redshift in the range $40 < z < 21\,380$. This is the highest redshift galaxy candidate discovered to date, and is in significant tension with current and future predictions from cosmological simulations, with implications for galaxy evolution in the (very) early Universe.