Robert Simcoe (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research) "The Emergence of Circumgalactic Heavy Elements in the First Gyr with JWST/EIGER"
3:30–4:30 pm ERC 161
Robert Simcoe (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research) "The Emergence of Circumgalactic Heavy Elements in the First Gyr with JWST/EIGER"
Heavy element absorption systems were first detected in reionization-era quasar spectra nearly two decades ago. However it has only become possible to observe large samples of galaxies at similar redshift in the last year, with the commissioning of JWST. I will describe early results from "Emission line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionization" (EIGER), a 120-hour Cycle 1 survey of six z>6 quasar fields using the JWST/NIRCam slitless grism. With hundreds of galaxies now detected in the foreground, background, and clustered about the QSO hosts, EIGER is providing some of the first new constraints on metal enrichment in the first Gyr, as well as black hole, halo, and stellar masses of the quasar hosts, and the properties of a potential new population of low-luminosity red AGN.