Related papers: Observing the first galaxies - a case for an inter…
Population III (Pop III) stars, the first generation of stars formed from primordial gas, played a fundamental role in shaping the early universe through their influence on cosmic reionization, early chemical enrichment, and the formation…
The first Pop III stars formed out of primordial, metal free gas, in minihalos at z>20, and kickstarted the cosmic processes of reionizaton and enrichment. While these stars are likely more massive than their enriched counterparts, the…
The near-infrared spectral region is becoming a very useful wavelength range to detect and quantify the stellar population of galaxies. Models are developing to predict the contribution of TP-AGB stars, that should dominate the NIR spectra…
While most simulations of the epoch of reionization have focused on single-stellar populations in star-forming dwarf galaxies, products of binary evolution are expected to significantly contribute to emissions of hydrogen-ionizing photons.…
In the first part of this manuscript, I present the results on the properties of the interstellar medium and the stellar content of galaxies at z=0.6, from a representative sample of distant galaxies observed with the long slit spectrograph…
The abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars preserve a fossil record of the Universe's earliest chemical enrichment by the supernova explosions from the evolution of first generation of stars, also referred to as Population III (or…
The formation of the first stars marks a watershed moment in the history of our universe. As the first luminous structures, these stars (also known as Population III, or Pop III stars) seed the first galaxies and begin the process of…
Very metal-poor massive stars in the Local Group are our best proxies for the Universe's first stars, making them essential for modeling reionization and early galactic chemical evolution. Studying such stars in our Local Universe is key to…
We extend the spectral range of our stellar population synthesis models based on the MILES and CaT empirical stellar spectral libraries. For this purpose we combine these two libraries with the Indo-U.S. to construct composite stellar…
We describe MIFS, a second generation integral-field spectrograph for the VLT, operating in the visible wavelength range. It combines a 1'x1' field of view with the improved spatial resolution provided by multi-conjugate adaptive optics and…
The recent launch of JWST has enabled the exciting prospect of detecting the first generation of metal-free, Population III (Pop. III) stars. Determining the emission line signatures that robustly signify the presence of Pop. III stars…
We present the first results obtained from our pilot ultra-deep near-IR survey with ISAAC/VLT, aimed at the detection of z>7 sources using lensing clusters as natural Gravitational Telescopes. Evolutionary synthesis models of PopIII and…
We revisit the formation and evolution of the first galaxies using new hydrodynamic cosmological simulations with the ART code. Our simulations feature a recently developed model for H2 formation and dissociation, and a star formation…
We present a new near-field cosmological probe of the initial mass function (IMF) of the first stars. Specifically, we constrain the lower-mass limit of the Population III (Pop III) IMF with the total number of stars in large, unbiased…
The heavyweight stellar initial mass function (IMF) observed in the cores of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has been linked to formation of their cores in an initial swiftly-quenched rapid starburst. However, the outskirts of ETGs are…
We present a new set of stellar interior and synthesis models for predicting the integrated emission from stellar populations in star clusters and galaxies of arbitrary age and metallicity. This work differs from existing spectral synthesis…
Observations of mergers of multi-compact object systems offer insights to the formation processes of massive stars in globular clusters. Simulations of stellar clusters, may be used to understand and interpret observations. Simulations…
I present an overview of our ongoing project aimed at building a new generation of velocity dispersion profiles ad rotation curves for a representative sample of Galactic globular clusters, from the the radial velocity of hundreds…
Population III stars, the first generation of stars formed from primordial Big Bang material with a top-heavy IMF, should contribute substantially to the Universe reionization and they are crucial for understanding the early metal…
Models for the formation and evolution of galaxies readily predict physical properties such as the star formation rates, metal enrichment histories, and, increasingly, gas and dust content of synthetic galaxies. Such predictions are…