October 24-28, 2016

Abstract

First Light: Exploring the Spectra of Galaxies in the Early Universe

Kirk Barrow (Georgia Institute of Technology)

John H. Wise, Georgia Institute of Technology

We present synthetic JWST observations for galactic halos forming during the epoch of reionization. Due to the strong impact of nebular emission lines and the relatively compact scale and dynamics of HII regions, high resolution cosmological simulations and a robust suite of analysis tools are required to properly simulate spectra. Using cosmological radiation hydrodynamic simulations of the first galaxies, we created a software pipeline consisting of FSPS, Hyperion, Cloudy and our own tools to generate synthetic IR observations from a fully three-dimensional arrangement of gas, dust, and stars. Our prescription allows us to include emission lines from a complete chemical network and incorporate the effect of dust extinction and scattering in the line of sight of the observer. We provide spectra, imaging, and photometry for both HST and JWST IR filters, luminosity relationships, and emission line strengths for nearly 1700 galaxies in the overdense region of the Renaissance Simulation (Xu et al. 2013). Our resulting synthetic spectra show high variability between galactic halos with a strong dependence on stellar mass, metallicity, gas mass fraction, viewing angle, and formation history.

Talk