The First Galaxies: Signatures of the Initial Starburst
Jarrett L. Johnson, Thomas H. Greif, Volker Bromm, Ralf S. Klessen,, Joseph Ippolito

TL;DR
This study uses cosmological simulations to analyze the signatures of the first starburst galaxies at high redshift, focusing on emission lines as indicators of stellar populations and initial mass functions, with implications for JWST observations.
Contribution
It provides detailed predictions of emission line ratios and equivalent widths for Pop III starbursts, linking them to stellar initial mass functions and galaxy detectability with JWST.
Findings
He II 1640 luminosity correlates strongly with stellar mass.
He II 1640 to Ly_alpha or H_alpha ratio indicates IMF type.
He II 1640 EW varies significantly with IMF, from ~20 to ~200 Å.
Abstract
Detection of the radiation emitted from the first galaxies at z > 10 will be made possible in the next decade, with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We carry out cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations of Population III (Pop III) starbursts in a 10^8 M_Sun dwarf galaxy at z = 12.5. For different star formation efficiencies and stellar initial mass functions (IMFs), we calculate the luminosities and equivalent widths (EWs) of the recombination lines H_alpha, Ly_alpha, and He II 1640, under the simple assumption that the stellar population does not evolve over the first ~3 Myr of the starburst. Although only < 40 percent of the gas in the central 100 pc of the galaxy is photoionized, we find that photoheating by massive stars causes a strong dynamical response, which results in a weak correlation between luminosity emitted in hydrogen recombination lines and…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
