Summer Program

Revealing the Detailed Astrophysics of Early Galaxies with JWST

August 20–September 10, 2023

Organizers:

*Michael Maseda, University of Wisconsin
Allison Strom, 
Northwestern University
Risa Wechsler, 
Stanford University
L.Y. Aaron Yung, 
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Since beginning science operations in Summer 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already revealed unexpected details about the high-redshift universe, including evidence for relatively massive and enriched galaxies at very early times. There will undoubtedly be more surprises as the community leverages both new and improved observing modes in the near- and mid-infrared to extend studies of galaxy demographics, abundances, and kinematics to previously inaccessible populations. To confidently interpret these novel observations, we must first confront the unique data reduction and analysis challenges presented by JWST, and one goal of this workshop is to provide a venue for discussing best practices for handling the data.

It is also critical to build new connections: between studies of galaxy populations across cosmic time (which may use similar methods to investigate different samples) and between theory and observations (which use different methods to investigate the same phenomena). Ultimately, this will require collaboration between experts in imaging, spectroscopy, stellar population synthesis, photoionization modeling, and semi-analytical and hydrodynamic simulations. To facilitate these efforts, this workshop focuses on areas where new observations from JWST represent a substantial step forward in studying high-redshift galaxies, how we understand the physics of their assembly, and the connection between observations, theory, and simulations.

Topics that will be explored at the workshop include:

  • Data reduction and analysis techniques for NIRCam, NIRSpec, MIRI, and NIRISS observations
  • The detailed chemical abundance patterns and physical conditions in galaxies across cosmic time
  • The spatially-resolved properties of larger, more diverse, and more representative samples of high-redshift galaxies
  • The properties of low-mass galaxies and their stellar populations
  • The nature of the first stars and black holes

*organizer responsible for participant diversity

Summer Workshops

The summer program, running for 16 weeks from late-May to mid-September, emphasizes exciting open problems at the cutting edge. Two or three concurrent workshops, each with a specific focus selected for timeliness and the potential for breakthroughs and of two to five weeks in length, establish the main themes of each week, with twelve or thirteen different workshops each summer, balanced across fields including particle physics, string theory, astrophysics and hard and soft condensed matter physics, as well as emerging areas including biological physics, ultra-cold atom physics, quantum information, and physical mathematics. Additional researchers participate in small working groups or as individual researchers. This framework is designed to maximize informal interactions and free discussion within each area and to promote cross-fertilization between different areas via the common language of theoretical physics. Participation in the summer program of the Aspen Center for Physics is by application and subsequent invitation only. View past workshops.