Affiliation: INAF – OAS

Contribution: Oral

Title: Parsec-Scale Star Formation in the First Billion Years: Insights from JWST at the Focus of Cosmic Telescopes

Abstract: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revolutionizing our understanding of the early Universe, confirming sources at redshifts greater than 14 and revealing an abundance of UV-bright galaxies emerging at redshifts beyond 9. Investigating their internal structures at scales of tens of parsecs represents a current frontier in astronomy. JWST’s high-angular-resolution imaging and spectroscopy, enhanced by gravitational lensing, uncover gravitationally bound stellar clusters down to parsec sizes for galaxies at cosmological distances. Leveraging JWST alongside strong gravitational lensing addresses three crucial areas: (1) the search for globular cluster precursors, (2) investigating the role of stellar clusters in cosmic reionization, and (3) the search for forming Population III stellar complexes. I will present recent results from JWST observations, particularly discussing the highly magnified Cosmic Gems galaxy and its stellar clusters identified at z~10.2, and reporting on extremely faint (Muv > -13), low-metallicity, lensed star-forming complexes observed within the first first Gyr of cosmic history (z >~ 6).

This contribution can be found here (pdf).