Astro Seminar
Understanding early galaxy evolution with novel statistical, numerical and artificial intelligence methods
Speaker: Christopher Lovell ( University of Portsmouth)
Date: Wednesday 13 December 2023
Time: 13:00
Venue: N3.28/Zoom
Early results from JWST have raised exciting questions about our understanding of early galaxy formation, with some suggestions that the concordance cosmological model may even be in doubt. In this talk I'll review some of these early results through the lens of extreme value statistics. I'll also present the First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES), a series of high-resolution 'zoom' hydrodynamic simulations using the EAGLE physics model. These simulations allow us to significantly extend the dynamic range of our predictions compared to typical periodic simulations during the epoch of reionisation, and represent a unique theoretical comparison set for the avalanche of observational results from both JWST and other wide field observatories on the horizon. Finally, I'll also present some results using novel AI techniques, coupled with numerical simulations, to generate large mock data sets efficiently, exploring the full range of parameter choices, and enabling simulation based inference approaches