The First Galaxies with JWST - Discoveries and Properties

IAP weekly specialised seminars / 16 June 2023

Christopher Conselice (Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, UK)

I will present the recent discovery of a significant number of new candidate high-redshift (z above 6.5) galaxies in the early Universe using the JWST Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) GTO survey, as well as public JWST data. This is currently the largest JWST investigation of its kind to date, with over 100 square arcmins spanning 6 fields to some of the greatest depths reachable thus far. I will present the details of our z above 6.5 sample of more than 160 galaxies, including many new candidates between redshifts z=12 and 20, increasing by a significant amount the number of galaxies at this epoch. My talk will describe how our reliable sample at the highest redshifts is identified, present the first robust UV luminosity function at z above 10 based on these galaxies, and show preliminary results studying the first stellar mass and star forming properties of a statistical sample at these redshifts. I will conclude with the implications of our results for the theoretical ideas behind galaxy formation as well as what our results imply about reionization.