Observations of the High Redshift Universe

Abstract

(Abridged) In these lectures aimed for non-specialists, I review progress in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Both the star formation history and assembly of stellar mass can be empirically traced from redshifts z~6 to the present, but how the various distant populations inter-relate and how stellar assembly is regulated by feedback and environmental processes remains unclear. I also discuss how these studies are being extended to locate and characterize the earlier sources beyond z~6. Did early star-forming galaxies contribute significantly to the reionization process and over what period did this occur? Neither theory nor observations are well-developed in this frontier topic but the first results presented here provide important guidance on how we will use more powerful future facilities.

To appear in `First Light in Universe', Saas-Fee Advanced Course 36, Swiss Soc. Astrophys. Astron. in press. 115 pages, 64 figures (see http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~rse/saas-fee.pdf for hi-res figs.) For lecture ppt files see http://obswww.unige.ch/saas-fee/preannouncement/course_pres/overview_f.html

References in corpus (29)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• The James Webb Space Telescope
• On the normalisation of the cosmic star formation history
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• Constraining the Evolution of the Ionizing Background and the Epoch of Reionization with z ~ 6 Quasars II: A Sample of 19 Quasars
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• The Mass Assembly History of Field Galaxies: Detection of an Evolving Mass Limit for Star Forming Galaxies
• The Cosmic Infrared Background Resolved by Spitzer. Contributions of Mid-Infrared Galaxies to the Far-Infrared Background
• The rapid formation a large rotating disk galaxy three billion years after the Big Bang
• The End of the Reionization Epoch Probed by Ly-alpha Emitters at z=6.5 in the Subaru Deep Field
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: III. The abundance of massive galaxies 3-6 billion years after the Big Bang
• A galaxy at a redshift z = 6.96
• The Sloan-Lens ACS Survey II: stellar populations and internal structure of early-type lens galaxies
• The Evolution of Optical Depth in the Ly-alpha Forest: Evidence Against Reionization at z~6
• Spectroscopic Identification of Massive Galaxies at z~2.3 with Strongly Suppressed Star Formation
• The Space Density and Colors of Massive Galaxies at 2<z<3: the Predominance of Distant Red Galaxies
• A Keck Survey for Gravitationally-Lensed Lyman-alpha Emitters in the Redshift Range 8.5 < z < 10.4: New Constraints on the Contribution of Low Luminosity Sources to Cosmic Reionization
• The Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories of Galaxies at z ~ 6: Constraints from Spitzer Observations in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey
• The Stellar Mass Density at z~6 from Spitzer Imaging of i-drop Galaxies
• The evolution of the number density of large disk galaxies in COSMOS
• A New Measurement of the Stellar Mass Density at z~5: Implications for the Sources of Cosmic Reionization
• Resolved Spectroscopy of a Gravitationally Lensed L* Lyman-break Galaxy at z~5
• Constraining the population of 6 < z < 10 star-forming galaxies with deep near-IR images of lensing clusters
• A systematic search for very massive galaxies at z > 4
• The discovery of a significant sample of massive galaxies at redshifts 5 < z < 6 in the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey Early Data Release
• The 1 um discontinuity in the Extragalactic Background Light spectrum: an artefact of foreground subtraction
• Clustering of the IR Background Light with Spitzer: Contribution from Resolved Sources

Cited by in corpus (9)

• The Evolutionary History of Lyman Break Galaxies Between Redshift 4 and 6: Observing Successive Generations of Massive Galaxies in Formation
• The stellar mass function of star-forming galaxies and the mass-dependent SFR function since z=2.23 from HiZELS
• The Beginning and Evolution of the Universe
• Extragalactic Background Light: Inventory of light throughout the cosmic history
• The properties of quasar hosts at the peak of the quasar activity
• Biases and systematics in the observational derivation of galaxy properties: comparing different techniques on synthetic observations of simulated galaxies
• Light-Cone Distortion of the Clustering and Abundance of Massive Galaxies at High-Redshifts
• Near-IR narrow-band imaging with CIRCE at the Gran Telescopio Canarias: Searching for Ly$\alpha$-emitters at $z\sim 9.3$
• The Frontier of Reionization: Theory and Forthcoming Observations