Early galaxy formation and its large-scale effects

Understand

Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution.

• Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of additional physical processes must be understood and implemented in theoretical models before these can be reliably used to interpret observations.
• In parallel, the astonishing recent progresses made in detecting galaxies that formed only a few hundreds of million years after the Big Bang is pushing the quest for more sophisticated and detailed studies of early structures.
• In this review, we combine the information gleaned from different theoretical models/studies to build a coherent picture of the Universe in its early stages which includes the physics of galaxy formation along with the impact that early structures had on large-scale processes as cosmic reionization and metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium.