Affiliation: UCLA

Contribution: Invited

Title: Focus on: The Earliest Star Formation

Abstract: We are currently experiencing a revolution in our understanding of early stellar populations in distant galaxies, driven in large part by brand-new spectroscopic observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. In this talk, I will review new advances in our understanding of star formation at high redshift based on so-called galaxy scaling relations probing star-formation rates, stellar masses, dust content, and metallicities. I will then turn to novel insights we are gaining about the mixture of heavy elements in galaxies (e.g., α/Fe, N/O, C/O), which constrain the nature of massive stars and the cycling of gas through the earliest galaxies. Furthermore, I will discuss evidence for the strong evolution in the physical conditions in the ISM (e.g., density), and the implications for star formation at high redshift. Collectively, these new observations present important challenges for models of galaxy formation.

This contribution can be found here (pdf).