The Principal Investigator and his collaborators will carry out a combined program aimed at modeling the first generation of baryonic objects. The first step is adaptive-mesh refinement simulations, a popular method that adjusts the simulation box sizes to reflect the density of matter. The work self-consistently includes essential physical effects, such as the ultra-violet background radiation field and the production of metals and energy via supernovae. The results will enable us to gain a physical understanding of how these processes will affect the next generation, and to calibrate simple analytic prescriptions. In the second step, they will combine this quantitative and qualitative understanding with semi-analytic models of structure formation and reionization in order to make a wide range of observational predictions for the next generation of ground and space-based observatories.
A graduate student will carry out the proposed work in the form of PhD thesis research. The simulations will serve as the basis for high-quality visualizations in conjunction with personnel at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the American Museum of Natural History with whom both members of the team have worked previously. Another initiative will involve New York high school teachers and students with the Science Research Training Program.
