Abstract

JWST's Spectroscopy at the Cosmic Dawn

Pascal Oesch (Geneva University)

JWST's revolutionary capabilities will result in a quantum leap forward in our exploration of the earliest phases of galaxy formation in the distant universe. In particular, JWST/NIRSPEC's unprecedented spectroscopic capabilities extending out to ~5 micron open up a completely new parameter space of exploration. This will finally provide us with a much more detailed understanding of the physical and chemical properties of galaxies in the epoch of reionization out to the most distant galaxies currently known. In this talk, I will summarize recent progress in our spectroscopic exploration of the most distant galaxies both from space with HST grism spectra as well as from the ground with efficient multi-object NIR spectrographs. I will also highlight some of the exciting possibilities that lie ahead with JWST to push the spectroscopic frontier to the cosmic dawn and what insights we may be able to obtain from this spectroscopy at different redshifts.

Talk