NSF-BSF: Galaxies in the Reionization Era

Principal Investigators (PIs) Stark and Zitrin will identify some of the largest ionized gas bubbles around massive galaxies within the first billion years of cosmic time. The team will conduct a survey using the Binospec spectrograph on the MMT telescope and the Folded-Port Infrared Echellette spectrometer on the Magellan telescope. The PIs will also collaborate with education experts at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center to host professional development workshops for teachers and provide them with human orrery models to use in their classrooms. This project is supported by both the National Science Foundation and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation to further collaborations between the astrophysical communities in the two countries. PI Stark is a co-PI of the Reionization Era Bright Emission Line Survey (REBELS) using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillmeter Array. This project is a complimentary rest-frame ultraviolet spectroscopic survey of the bright REBELS galaxies at z~7. The team will characterize the progress of reionization around these massive galaxies using the brightness of the Lyman-alpha line and fainter diagnostic lines observed in each system. The data will be used to characterize both the nature of the ionized gas in terms of kinematics and chemical enrichment, as well as to determine whether the major source of ionization is an active galactic nucleus or a population of young massive stars. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.