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We have a successful JWST Cycle 1 program that will obtain the deepest spectra of high redshift galaxies with the $10 billion telescope, program 2123: "A Pathfinder for JWST Spectroscopy: Deep High Spectral Resolution Maps of Galaxies over 1<z<6." We sincerely hope that these data will lead to ground-breaking results on how galaxies evolve over time, and in particular about the complex and violent activities of the era first few generations of galaxies in the Universe. And we hope the data will also come with some interesting surprises that will challenge our understanding of the physical processes in the nascent Universe. Our project will be the first to create spectral maps of galaxies using a new technique that we developed. Here is a good introductory video on this general subject area. JHU grad student Alexander de la Vega recently gave a talk summarizing the program.
There are myriad possible science projects, and all will be the first of their kind since we've never had data like this! Students will be briefly introduced to each topic before they decide on a given project to ensure a good match. Here are a few possible projects; there are many more. (1) From theory, we expect that galaxies have chaotic and complex dynamics early-on. It is unclear whether these early systems are even virialized, or perhaps can even be called galaxies. Our data will allow us to measurer the first time how the dynamics of galaxies evolve from the early Universe to today. (2) Significant and ubiquitous outflows in galaxies are needed to reionize the Universe according to our current theoretical understanding. Our extremely deep spectra will measure any violent outflows that are expected in the early Universe. This is crucial for determining how the Universe was reionized, not to mention how galaxies formed. (3) For the first time we will accurately measure the rates at which galaxies form stars over a significant range in cosmic history. We will do this with key emission lines that only JWST can observe. Finally, it's worth mentioning that a particular strength of our research group is that we all study the same galaxies from a different perspective, and then combine these perspectives to form a more complete picture.
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Thanks for your interest!
Above: Below is a photo of some of us in June 2021.
Above: A more formal photo a few years ago.
