Description:

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.

Robert Simco, Professor, MIT

Host: Allison Strom