Spectroscopy of Galaxies in the Reionization Era 

Ramesh Mainali

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Physics Department, The Catholic University of America

Wed, January 29, 2020 - 4:00 PM
Karl Herzfeld Auditorium of Hannan Hall - Rm 108

Deep imaging campaigns from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer telescope have revolutionized our understanding of the early Universe delivering the first large sample of high redshift galaxies at 6<z<10. Observations suggest that over the same redshift interval hydrogen content of the Universe transitioned from being neutral to an ionized state. Spectroscopic studies from Keck and VLT telescopes have started to provide the first glimpse of physical properties of these early galaxies revealing spectral features that potentially indicates very different stellar populations from what has been observed at lower redshifts. However, owing to the limited number of z>6 sources with deep spectroscopy and a limited number of analogs at lower redshifts, it has proven difficult to generalize and interpret the initial results. In this talk, I will present results from the latest observational efforts to characterize early galaxies using rest-frame ultraviolet spectral features. I will then discuss an ongoing spectroscopic campaign to understand the reionization era galaxies using lower redshift analogs.

Refreshments served at 3:45 PM

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