Related papers: The First Billion Years, According to JWST
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is unveiling astounding results about the first few hundred million years of life of the Universe, delivering images of galaxies at very high redshifts. Here, we develop a UV luminosity function model…
This contribution gives a brief overview of the theoretical ideas underlying our current understanding of the early Universe. Confronting the predictions of the early Universe models with cosmological observations, in particular of the…
An introductory account is given of the modern understanding of the physics of the early Universe. Particular emphasis is placed on the paradigm of cosmological inflation, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the…
Observations of star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe have confirmed the importance of massive stars in shaping galaxy emission and evolution. Distant stellar populations are unresolved, and the limited data available must be…
A major scientific goal of JWST is to probe the epoch of re-ionization of the Universe at z above 6, and up to 20 and beyond. At these redshifts, galaxies are just beginning to form and the observable objects are early black holes,…
This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and…
Among the remarkable strides made by JWST is the discovery of the earliest star clusters found to date. These have been proposed as early progenitors of globular clusters, which are known to come from the early stages of star formation in…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has recently become operational, is capable of detecting objects at record-breaking redshifts, $z \gtrsim 15$. This is a crucial advance for observational cosmology, as at these redshifts the…
The James Webb Space Telescope will enable a wealth of new scientific investigations in the near- and mid-infrared, with sensitivity and spatial/spectral resolution greatly surpassing its predecessors. In this paper, we focus upon Solar…
Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of…
Existing data sets include an image of the Universe when it was 0.4 million years old (in the form of the cosmic microwave background), as well as images of individual galaxies when the Universe was older than a billion years. But there is…
The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) signals a new era in exploring galaxies in the high-$z$ universe. Current and upcoming JWST imaging will potentially detect galaxies out to $z \sim 20$, creating a new urgency in the quest…
I present first principle model calculations for the reionization of the Universe, which provide simple diagnostics to identify the reionization sources. Within this frame, I also discuss the results derived from the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field…
We summarize the design and performance of the James Webb Space Telescope that is to be launched to an L2 orbit in 2011, and how it is designed, in particular, to study the epochs of First Light, Reionization and Galaxy Assembly.
The first stars ended the cosmic Dark Ages and created the first heavy elements necessary for the formation of planets and life. The properties of these stars remain uncertain, and it may be decades before individual Pop III stars are…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a window on many new puzzles in the early Universe, including a population of high-redshift star clusters with extremely high stellar surface density, suggesting unique star formation…
The primary concern of this thesis is to understand the formation and properties of the first galaxies, as well as the influence of the first stars in terms of radiative, mechanical and chemical feedback. In particular, we elucidate the…
Observations of star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe (z > 2) are starting to confirm the importance of massive stars in shaping galaxy emission and evolution. Inevitably, these distant stellar populations are unresolved, and the…
The search for signs of life in the Universe has entered a new phase with the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Detecting biosignature gases via exoplanet atmosphere transmission spectroscopy is in principle within JWST's…
The transition between the nearly smooth initial state of the Universe and its clumpy state today occurred during the epoch when the first stars and low-luminosity quasars formed. For Cold Dark Matter cosmologies, the radiation produced by…