“Feedback in Dwarf Galaxies at z>2”

Ryan Trainor, Franklin & Marshall College

High-redshift dwarf galaxies (L << L*) are high-priority science targets for both JWST and current surveys: these galaxies appear extremely sensitive to stellar feedback, and they are likely to dominate the ionizing photon budget during the epoch of reionization (EoR). However, the physical properties of the stellar populations and interstellar media in these galaxies are difficult to constrain because of their extremely faint continuum and line emission.

I will describe our on-going work to spectroscopically characterize low-luminosity galaxies at high redshifts using two complementary methods: stacked spectra, which reveal average galaxy properties, and lensed spectra of individual galaxies, which will constrain the variability of faint galaxy populations in the early Universe. Together, these surveys will produce powerful constraints on the role of faint galaxies at all redshifts and on the observability of such galaxies during the EoR.