Parallel sessions

Understanding first light - the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the early Universe - remains a fundamental and challenging frontier in observational cosmology. Such objects form in a largely neutral medium and cause the most dramatic phase change of the Universe, “re-ionisation”. While remarkable progress in both observations and theory has been made, our understanding of galaxies and their impact on the high-z intergalactic medium in the first billion years since the big bang is still restricted to only the brightest probes probing a handful of sight-lines to z>7. A number of fundamental questions remain unresolved, including: the nature of the faint high-z galaxy population, the role of nascent black holes at high-z, the evolution and influence of dust, the energetics and duration of reionisation, the development of structure and detecting the first stars. Owing to the increased sensitivity of forthcoming ground- and space-based multi-wavelength telescopes, this decade will see significant advances leading to strong constraints on galaxy evolution and formation models. Building on Hubble’s legacy, Webb will revolutionise our ability to probe further down the luminosity function, complemented by large bright samples from wide-area surveys with Euclid and Roman. The ELTs and ALMA will deliver exquisitely detailed information on the gaseous and dusty media of such galaxies, coupled to constraints on the role and influence of early black holes from Athena and radio observations. The plethora of sensitive radio facilities including the SKA & pathfinders are poised to uniquely map the influence of the first galaxies on the large-scale IGM (in 3D).

By bringing together observers and theorists, this session will capitalise on and prepare for these exciting developments. We will focus on three key themes at z>7:

- observations, theory & simulations of the IGM
- observations and properties of galaxies
- theory/simulations of galaxies

Schedule:

Schedule:

16:00 John Weaver “Beasts in the Bubbles: Measurement of the Massive End of z>8 UV Luminosity Function”
16:15 Rachana Bhatawdekar “Studying the faint galaxies in the epoch of reionisation”
16:30 Lukas Furtak “Robust estimates of the lensed high-redshift galaxy stellar mass function with new completeness simulations”
16:45 Aswin Vijayan “FLARES: The photometric properties of galaxies at cosmic dawn”
17:00 Nicolas Laporte “Probing Cosmic Dawn with the observation of the first galaxies”
17:15 Joris Witstok “Uncovering the physics of star formation in the Epoch of Reionization with [CII] 158 um and [OIII] 88 um”

Session 2
09:00 Ryan Begley “The Lyman Continuum escape fraction of z~3.5 VANDELS galaxies”
09:15 David Sobral “Resolving the hosts of early ionised bubbles at z~7 with HST, MUSE & ALMA”
09:30 Heather Wade “Y-NBS: Probing the epoch of reionisation with the brightest distant LAEs”
09:45 Mengtao Tang “Spectroscopy of an extreme [OIII] emitting AGN at z=3.2: implications for AGNs in the reionization era”
10:00 Jussi Kuusisto “AGN in FLARES and predictions for Euclid”
10:15 Christopher Lovell “Passive galaxies during the epoch of reionisation"

Session 3
16:00 Tomáš Šoltinský “The detectability of strong 21 cm forest absorbers in late reionisation models”
16:15 Tsang Keung Chan “The propagation of ionization fronts during cosmic reionization”
16:30 Andrea Incatasciato “The build-up of the Lyman-Werner background during cosmic structure formation”
16:45 Huanqing Chen “Recovering the large-scale density field of z~6 quasars”
17:00 Viola Gelli “Dwarf satellites of high-z Lyman Break Galaxies: a free lunch for JWST”
17:15 Andrew Bunker “Studying first light and Reionization with JWST observations by the NIRSpec GTO team and JADES collaboration”