Related papers: The First Billion Years, According to JWST
Over the next two decades, gravitational-wave (GW) observations are expected to evolve from a discovery-driven endeavour into a precision tool for astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. Current second-generation ground-based…
We present synthetic observations for the first generations of galaxies in the Universe and make predictions for future deep field observations for redshifts greater than 6. Due to the strong impact of nebular emission lines and the…
Since the launch of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in late 2021, our understanding of high-redshift objects has faced several upheavals. JWST has discovered much more massive galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBH) than cosmological…
Combining the public JWST/NIRCam imaging programs CEERS, PRIMER and JADES, spanning a total area of $\sim500\,{\rm arcmin}^2$, we obtain a sample of $>$30,000 galaxies at $z_{\rm phot}\sim4-9$ that allows us to perform a complete,…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) provide complementary probes of the early evolution of the Universe and of its particle content. Neutrinos play important roles in both cases, influencing the…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
Surveys with James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered candidate galaxies in the first 400 Myr of cosmic time. Preliminary indications have suggested these candidate galaxies may be more massive and abundant than previously thought.…
The aim of this thesis is to question some of the basic assumptions that go into building the $\Lambda$CDM model of our universe. The assumptions we focus on are the initial conditions of the universe, the fundamental forces in the universe…
The next generation of electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories will open unprecedented windows to the birth of the first supermassive black holes. This has the potential to reveal their origin and growth in the first billion…
Next generation observatories will enable us to study the first billion years of our Universe in unprecedented detail. Foremost among these are 21-cm interferometry with the HERA and the SKA, and high-$z$ galaxy observations with the James…
At redshifts between 5 and 20, stars and `subgalaxies' created the first heavy elements; these same systems (together perhaps with `miniquasars') generated the UV radiation that ionized the IGM, and maybe also the first magnetic fields. The…
Over the past decade, neutrino astronomy has emerged as a new window into the extreme and hidden universe. Current-generation experiments have detected high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin and identified the first sources, opening…
The recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed a larger number of bright galaxies at $z\gtrsim10$ than was expected. The origin of this excess is still under debate, although several possibilities have been…
Massive stars disrupt their natal molecular cloud material through radiative and mechanical feedback processes. These processes have profound effects on the evolution of interstellar matter in our Galaxy and throughout the Universe, from…
Millisecond pulsars, like pulsars, have led to major advances in many areas of astronomy and physics. The discovery in 2023 of a cosmological gravitational wave (GW) stochastic background using millisecond pulsar timing arrays has focused…
JWST has made several surprising discoveries, underscored by the `too early' appearance of well-formed galaxies and supermassive black holes. It recently also uncovered a compact galaxy (JWST-ER1g) associated with a complete Einstein ring…
Early JWST observations have revealed a high-redshift universe more vibrant than predicted by canonical galaxy-formation models within $\Lambda$CDM, showing an excess of ultraviolet(UV)-bright, massive, and morphologically mature galaxies.…
The evolution of the Universe is the ultimate laboratory to study fundamental physics across energy scales that span about 25 orders of magnitude: from the grand unification scale through particle and nuclear physics scales down to the…
The observable characteristics and subsequent evolution of young stellar populations is dominated by their massive stars. As our understanding of those massive stars and the factors affecting their evolution improves, so our interpretation…
JWST's discovery of unexpectedly bright $z>10$ galaxies has triggered claims that standard $\Lambda$CDM cannot reproduce their abundances, while estimates of the ionizing escape fraction $f_{\rm esc}$ at $z>6$ have spanned a factor of four…