TL;DRAbstract
The stellar populations harboured by some of the Universe’s earliest galaxies are within observational reach. Determining the details of these stellar populations and their formation histories within the first billion years after the Big Bang is crucial for both understanding the earliest stages of galaxy evolution and for assessing the contribution of early star-forming galaxies to cosmic reionization. This thesis presents observational measurements of the rest-frame UV and optical colours of star-forming Lyman Break galaxies (LBGs) at redshifts 4 < z < 9, and their inferred stellar population parameters. By combining ground-based ~1 deg² surveys with deeper, narrower space-based deep-field surveys, we have constrained the rest-frame UV spectral slope of galaxies over a wide-range of cosmic time (4 < z < 9) and luminosity (−23 < MUV < −17) in a self-consistent way. To do so, we developed simulations to allow the inference of intrinsic colours from noisy, potentially biased observation
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The stellar populations harboured by some of the Universe’s earliest galaxies are within observational reach. Determining the details of these stellar populations and their formation histories within the first billion years after the Big Bang is crucial for both understanding the earliest stages of galaxy evolution and for assessing the contribution of early star-forming galaxies to cosmic reionization. This thesis presents observational measurements of the rest-frame UV and optical colours of star-forming Lyman Break galaxies (LBGs) at redshifts 4 < z < 9, and their inferred stellar population parameters. By combining ground-based ~1 deg² surveys with deeper, narrower space-based deep-field surveys, we have constrained the rest-frame UV spectral slope of galaxies over a wide-range of cosmic time (4 < z < 9) and luminosity (−23 < MUV < −17) in a self-consistent way. To do so, we developed simulations to allow the inference of intrinsic colours from noisy, potentially biased observation
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