TY - JOUR
T1 - Searching for star formation beyond reionization
AU - Barton, Elizabeth J.
AU - Davé, Romeel
AU - Smith, John David T.
AU - Papovich, Casey
AU - Hernquist, Lars
AU - Springel, Volker
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Margaret Geller for encouraging us to write this Letter and for reading a draft, and we thank Rob Kennicutt, Steve Furlanetto, and an anonymous referee for insightful comments. Support for E. J. B. and R. D. was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF-01135.01 and HST-HF-0128.01-A, respectively, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555.
PY - 2004/3/20
Y1 - 2004/3/20
N2 - The goal of searching back in cosmic time to find star formation during the epoch of reionization will soon be within reach. We assess the detectability of high-redshift galaxies by combining cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation, stellar evolution models appropriate for the first generations of stars, and estimates of the efficiency for Lyα to escape from forming galaxies into the intergalactic medium. Our simulated observations show that Lyα emission at z ∼ 8 may be observable in the near-infrared with 8 m class telescopes and present-day technology. Not only is the detection of early star-forming objects vital to understanding the underlying cause of the reionization of the universe, but the timely discovery of a z > 7 star-forming population-or even an interesting upper limit on the emergent flux from these objects-will have implications for the design of the next generation of ground- and space-based facilities.
AB - The goal of searching back in cosmic time to find star formation during the epoch of reionization will soon be within reach. We assess the detectability of high-redshift galaxies by combining cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation, stellar evolution models appropriate for the first generations of stars, and estimates of the efficiency for Lyα to escape from forming galaxies into the intergalactic medium. Our simulated observations show that Lyα emission at z ∼ 8 may be observable in the near-infrared with 8 m class telescopes and present-day technology. Not only is the detection of early star-forming objects vital to understanding the underlying cause of the reionization of the universe, but the timely discovery of a z > 7 star-forming population-or even an interesting upper limit on the emergent flux from these objects-will have implications for the design of the next generation of ground- and space-based facilities.
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U2 - 10.1086/383489
DO - 10.1086/383489
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:2442592977
VL - 604
SP - L1-L4
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 1 II
ER -