Seen and unseen: bursty star formation and its implications for observations of high-redshift galaxies with JWST

Understand

Both observations and simulations have shown strong evidence for highly time-variable star formation in low-mass and/or high-redshift galaxies, which has important observational implications because high-redshift galaxy samples are rest-UV selected and therefore particularly sensitive to the recent star formation.

• Using a suite of cosmological "zoom-in" simulations at $z>5$ from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project, we examine the implications of bursty star formation histories for observations of high-redshift galaxies with JWST.
• We characterize how the galaxy observability depends on the star formation history.
• We also investigate selection effects due to bursty star formation on the physical properties measured, such as the gas fraction, specific star formation rate, and metallicity.