DAWN Cake Talk - Alex Cameron

Modelling the nebular continuum of starbursts at high-redshift

Abstract

Low metallicity massive stars have perhaps the largest uncertainties in terms of existing evolutionary, spectral, and nucleosynthetic models. This presents challenges when interpreting observations of high-redshift starburst galaxies, where these stars make a dominant contribution to observed spectra.

I will present results from an analysis of high quality spectroscopy of the most extreme starbursts observed with JWST/NIRSpec. Many of these spectra show unusually strong nebular emission and extreme ISM conditions, and I will discuss the implications of these findings for high-redshift stellar populations and spectral modelling.