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Karl Gebhardt

Publications and source records attributed to Karl Gebhardt.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX) I. Sample selection

We present the first Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) catalog in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX) observed between January 2017 and June 2020. HETDEX is an ongoing spectroscopic survey with no pre-selection based on magnitudes, colors or morphologies, enabling us to select AGN based on their spectral features. Both luminous quasars and low-luminosity Seyferts are found in our catalog. AGN candidates are selected with at least two significant AGN emission lines, such as the LyA and CIV line pair, or with single broad emission lines (FWHM > 1000 km/s). Each source is further confirmed by visual inspections. This catalog contains 5,322 AGN, covering an effective sky coverage of 30.61 deg^2. A total of 3,733 of these AGN have secure redshifts, and we provide redshift estimates for the remaining 1,589 single broad-line AGN with no cross matched spectral redshifts from SDSS DR14Q. The redshift range of the AGN catalog is 0.25 < z < 4.32, with a median of z = 2.1. The bolometric luminosity range is 10^9-10^14 Lsun with a median of 10^12 Lsun. The median r-band magnitude of the AGN is 21.6 mag, with 34% of the AGN have r > 22.5, and 2.6% reaching the detection limit at r ~ 26 mag of the deepest imaging surveys we searched. We also provide a composite spectrum of the AGN sample covering 700 AA - 4400 AA.

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Surface Brightness Profile of Lyman-$α$ Halos out to 320 kpc in HETDEX

We present the median-stacked Lyman-$α$ surface brightness profile of 968 spectroscopically selected Lyman-$α$ emitting galaxies (LAEs) at redshifts $1.9 80\,\mathrm{kpc}$, our profile is flatter than the MUSE model. The measured profile agrees at most radii with that of galaxies in the Byrohl et al. (2021) cosmological radiative transfer simulation at $z=3$. This suggests that the surface brightness of a Lyman-$α$ halo at $r\lesssim 100$ kpc is dominated by resonant scattering of Lyman-$α$ photons from star-forming regions in the central galaxy, whereas at $r > 100$ kpc it is dominated by photons from galaxies in surrounding dark matter halos.

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The HETDEX Instrumentation: Hobby-Eberly Telescope Wide Field Upgrade and VIRUS

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is undertaking a blind wide-field low-resolution spectroscopic survey of 540 square degrees of sky to identify and derive redshifts for a million Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) in the redshift range 1.9 < z < 3.5. The ultimate goal is to measure the expansion rate of the Universe at this epoch, to sharply constrain cosmological parameters and thus the nature of dark energy. A major multi-year wide field upgrade (WFU) of the HET was completed in 2016 that substantially increased the field of view to 22 arcminutes diameter and the pupil to 10 meters, by replacing the optical corrector, tracker, and prime focus instrument package and by developing a new telescope control system. The new, wide-field HET now feeds the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS), a new low-resolution integral field spectrograph (LRS2), and the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF), a precision near-infrared radial velocity spectrograph. VIRUS consists of 156 identical spectrographs fed by almost 35,000 fibers in 78 integral field units arrayed at the focus of the upgraded HET. VIRUS operates in a bandpass of 3500-5500 Angstroms with resolving power R~800. VIRUS is the first example of large scale replication applied to instrumentation in optical astronomy to achieve spectroscopic surveys of very large areas of sky. This paper presents technical details of the HET WFU and VIRUS, as flowed-down from the HETDEX science requirements, along with experience from commissioning this major telescope upgrade and the innovative instrumentation suite for HETDEX.

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Dynamical analysis of the dark matter and central black hole mass in the dwarf spheroidal Leo I

We measure the central kinematics for the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I using integrated-light measurements and previously published data. We find a steady rise in the velocity dispersion from $300^{\prime\prime}$ into the center. The integrated-light kinematics provide a velocity dispersion of $11.76\pm0.66$ km/s inside $75^{\prime\prime}$. After applying appropriate corrections to crowding in the central regions, we achieve consistent velocity dispersion values using velocities from individual stars. Crowding corrections need to be applied when targeting individual stars in high density stellar environments. From integrated light, we measure the surface brightness profile and find a shallow cusp towards the center. Axisymmetric, orbit-based models measure the stellar mass-to-light ratio, black hole mass and parameters for a dark matter halo. At large radii it is important to consider possible tidal effects from the Milky Way so we include a variety of assumptions regarding the tidal radius. For every set of assumptions, models require a central black hole consistent with a mass $(3.3 \pm 2) \times 10^6\, M_\odot$. The no-black-hole case for any of our assumptions is excluded at over 95% significance, with $6.4<Δχ^2<14$. A black hole of this mass would have significant effect on dwarf galaxy formation and evolution. The dark halo parameters are heavily affected by the assumptions for the tidal radii, with the circular velocity only constrained to be above 30 km/s. Reasonable assumptions for the tidal radius result in stellar orbits consistent with an isotropic distribution in the velocities. These more realistic models only show strong constraints for the mass of the central black hole.

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The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) Survey Design, Reductions, and Detections

We describe the survey design, calibration, commissioning, and emission-line detection algorithms for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). The goal of HETDEX is to measure the redshifts of over a million Ly$α$ emitting galaxies between 1.88<z<3.52, in a 540 deg^2 area encompassing a co-moving volume of 10.9 Gpc^3. No pre-selection of targets is involved; instead the HETDEX measurements are accomplished via a spectroscopic survey using a suite of wide-field integral field units distributed over the focal plane of the telescope. This survey measures the Hubble expansion parameter and angular diameter distance, with a final expected accuracy of better than 1%. We detail the project's observational strategy, reduction pipeline, source detection, and catalog generation, and present initial results for science verification in the COSMOS, Extended Groth Strip, and GOODS-N fields. We demonstrate that our data reach the required specifications in throughput, astrometric accuracy, flux limit, and object detection, with the end products being a catalog of emission-line sources, their object classifications, and flux-calibrated spectra.

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First HETDEX Spectroscopic Determinations of Ly$α$ and UV Luminosity Functions at $z=2-3$: Bridging a Gap Between Faint AGN and Bright Galaxies

We present Ly$α$ and ultraviolet-continuum (UV) luminosity functions (LFs) of galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) at $z=2.0-3.5$ determined by the un-targetted optical spectroscopic survey of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). We combine deep Subaru imaging with HETDEX spectra resulting in $11.4$ deg$^2$ of fiber-spectra sky coverage, obtaining $18320$ galaxies spectroscopically identified with Ly$α$ emission, $2126$ of which host type 1 AGN showing broad (FWHM$~>1000$ km s$^{-1}$) Ly$α$ emission lines. We derive the Ly$α$ (UV) LF over 2 orders of magnitude covering bright galaxies and AGN in $\log L_\mathrm{Lyα}/\mathrm{[erg~s^{-1}]}=43.3-45.5$ ($-27 -21$) type 1 AGN increases from $z\sim2$ to $z\sim0$ as opposed to the evolution of bright ($M_\mathrm{UV}<-21$) type 1 AGN, suggesting the AGN downsizing in the rest-frame UV luminosity.

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Correcting correlation functions for redshift-dependent interloper contamination

The construction of catalogues of a particular type of galaxy can be complicated by interlopers contaminating the sample. In spectroscopic galaxy surveys this can be due to the misclassification of an emission line; for example in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) low redshift [OII] emitters may make up a few percent of the observed Ly$α$ emitter (LAE) sample. The presence of contaminants affects the measured correlation functions and power spectra. Previous attempts to deal with this using the cross-correlation function have assumed sources at a fixed redshift, or not modelled evolution within the adopted redshift bins. However, in spectroscopic surveys like HETDEX, where the contamination fraction is likely to be redshift dependent, the observed clustering of misclassified sources will appear to evolve strongly due to projection effects, even if their true clustering does not. We present a practical method for accounting for the presence of contaminants with redshift-dependent contamination fractions and projected clustering. We show using mock catalogues that our method, unlike existing approaches, yields unbiased clustering measurements from the upcoming HETDEX survey in scenarios with redshift-dependent contamination fractions within the redshift bins used. We show our method returns auto-correlation functions with systematic biases much smaller than the statistical noise for samples with at least as high as 7 per cent contamination. We also present and test a method for fitting for the redshift-dependent interloper fraction using the LAE-[OII] galaxy cross-correlation function, which gives less biased results than assuming a single interloper fraction for the whole sample.

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Detection of Lyman Continuum from 3.0 < z < 3.5 Galaxies in the HETDEX Survey

Questions as to what drove the bulk reionization of the Universe, how that reionization proceeded, and how the hard ionizing radiation reached the intergalactic medium remain open and debated. Observations probing that epoch are severely hampered by the increasing amounts of neutral gas with increasing redshift, so a small, but growing number of experiments are targeting star forming galaxies ($z\sim3$) as proxies. However, these studies, while providing fantastic detail, are time intensive, contain relatively few targets, and can suffer from selection biases. As a complementary alternative, we investigate whether stacking the already vast (and growing) numbers of low-resolution ($Δλ/ λ= 800$) Lyman-$α$ Emitting (LAE) galaxy spectra from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) can be used to measure ionizing photons (restframe 880-910Å) escaping their galaxy hosts. As a blind survey, HETDEX avoids the biases from continuum selected galaxies and its planned 540 square degree coverage promotes the statistical power of large numbers. In this paper, we confirm the feasibility of Lyman continuum detection by carefully selecting a sample of \lyccount\ high redshift ($z\sim$3) LAEs from a subset of HETDEX observations, stacking their spectra and measuring a $\gtrsim$3$σ$ detection of $0.10 μ$Jy restframe Lyman continuum emission, uncorrected for attenuation in the intergalactic medium, over the full sample stack ($3.0 < z < 3.5$ and $-22.0 \lesssim M_{\text{UV}} \lesssim -19.0$).

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An ALMA Gas-dynamical Mass Measurement of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Local Compact Galaxy UGC 2698

We present 0\farcs{14}-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) CO(2$-$1) observations of the circumnuclear gas disk in UGC 2698, a local compact galaxy. The disk exhibits regular rotation with projected velocities rising to 450 km s$^{-1}$ near the galaxy center. We fit gas-dynamical models to the ALMA data cube, assuming the CO emission originates from a dynamically cold, thin disk, and measured the mass of the supermassive black hole (BH) in UGC 2698 to be $M_{\mathrm{BH}} = (2.46 \pm{0.07}$ [$1σ$ stat] $^{+0.70}_{-0.78}$ [sys])$\times 10^9$ $M_\odot$. UGC 2698 is part of a sample of nearby early-type galaxies that are plausible $z\sim2$ red nugget relics. Previous stellar-dynamical modeling for three galaxies in the sample found BH masses consistent with the BH mass$-$stellar velocity dispersion ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}-σ_\star$) relation but over-massive relative to the BH mass$-$bulge luminosity ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}-L_{\mathrm{bul}}$) correlation, suggesting that BHs may gain the majority of their mass before their host galaxies. However, UGC 2698 is consistent with both $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-σ_\star$ and $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-L_{\mathrm{bul}}$. As UGC 2698 has the largest stellar mass and effective radius in the local compact galaxy sample, it may have undergone more recent mergers that brought it in line with the BH scaling relations. Alternatively, given that the three previously-measured compact galaxies are outliers from $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-L_{\mathrm{bul}}$, while UGC 2698 is not, there may be significant scatter at the poorly sampled high-mass end of the relation. Additional gas-dynamical $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ measurements for the compact galaxy sample will improve our understanding of BH$-$galaxy co-evolution.

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The HETDEX Survey: The Ly$α$ Escape Fraction from 3D-HST Emission Line Galaxies at $z \sim 2$

We measure the Ly$α$ escape fraction of 935 [OIII]-emitting galaxies between $1.9 < z < 2.35$ by comparing stacked spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope/WFC3's near-IR grism to corresponding stacks from the Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment's Internal Data Release 2. By measuring the stacks' H$β$ to Ly$α$ ratios, we determine the Ly$α$ escape fraction as a function of stellar mass, star formation rate, internal reddening, size, and [OIII]/H$β$ ratio. We show that the escape fraction of Ly$α$ correlates with a number of parameters, such as galaxy size, star formation rate, and nebular excitation. However, we also demonstrate that most of these relations are indirect, and the primary variables that control the escape of Ly$α$ are likely stellar mass and internal extinction. Overall, the escape of Ly$α$ declines from $\gtrsim 18\%$ in galaxies with $\log M/M_{\odot} \lesssim 9$ to $\lesssim 1\%$ for systems with $\log M/M_{\odot} \gtrsim 10$, with the sample's mean escape fraction being $6.0^{+0.6\%}_{-0.5\%}$.

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The Stars of the HETDEX Survey. I. Radial Velocities and Metal-Poor Stars from Low-Resolution Stellar Spectra

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is an unbiased, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey, designed to measure the expansion history of the universe through low-resolution ($R\sim750$) spectra of Lyman-Alpha Emitters. In its search for these galaxies, HETDEX will also observe a few 10$^{5}$ stars. In this paper, we present the first stellar value-added catalog within the internal second data release of the HETDEX Survey (HDR2). The new catalog contains 120,571 low-resolution spectra for 98,736 unique stars between $10 < G < 22$ spread across the HETDEX footprint at relatively high ($b\sim60^\circ$) Galactic latitudes. With these spectra, we measure radial velocities (RVs) for $\sim$42,000 unique FGK-type stars in the catalog and show that the HETDEX spectra are sufficient to constrain these RVs with a 1$σ$ precision of 28.0 km/s and bias of 3.5 km/s with respect to the LAMOST surveys and 1$σ$ precision of 27.5 km/s and bias of 14.0 km/s compared to the SEGUE survey. Since these RVs are for faint ($G\geq16$) stars, they will be complementary to Gaia. Using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE), we also demonstrate that the HETDEX spectra can be used to determine a star's T${\rm{eff}}$, and log g and its [Fe/H]. With the t-SNE projection of the FGK-type stars with HETDEX spectra we also identify 416 new candidate metal-poor ([Fe/H] $< -1$~dex) stars for future study. These encouraging results illustrate the utility of future low-resolution stellar spectroscopic surveys.

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Cosmological 3D HI Gas Map with HETDEX Ly$α$ Emitters and eBOSS QSOs at $z=2$: IGM-Galaxy/QSO Connection and a $\sim$ 40-Mpc Scale Giant HII Bubble Candidate

We present cosmological ($30-400$ Mpc) distributions of neutral hydrogen (HI) in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) traced by Ly$α$ Emitters (LAEs) and QSOs at $z=2.1-2.5$, selected with the data of the on-going Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) and the eBOSS survey. We investigate spatial correlations of LAEs and QSOs with HI tomography maps reconstructed from HI Ly$α$ forest absorption in the spectra of background galaxies and QSOs obtained by the CLAMATO survey and this study, respectively. In the cosmological volume far from QSOs, we find that LAEs reside in regions of strong HI absorption, i.e. HI rich, which is consistent with results of previous galaxy-background QSO pair studies. Moreover, there is an anisotropy in the HI-distribution plot of transverse and line-of-sight distances; on average the HI absorption peak is blueshifted by $\sim 200$ km s$^{-1}$ from the LAE Ly$α$ redshift, reproducing the known average velocity offset between the Ly$α$ emission redshift and the galaxy systemic redshift. We have identified a $\sim$ 40-Mpc scale volume of HI underdensity that is a candidate for a giant HII bubble, where six QSOs and an LAE overdensity exist at $\left < z \right > =2.16$. The coincidence of the QSO and LAE overdensities with the HI underdensity indicates that the ionizing photon radiation of the QSOs has created a highly ionized volume of multiple proximity zones in a matter overdensity. Our results suggest an evolutionary picture where HI gas in an overdensity of galaxies becomes highly photoionized when QSOs emerge in the galaxies.

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Unbiased Cosmological Parameter Estimation from Emission Line Surveys with Interlopers

The galaxy catalogs generated from low-resolution emission line surveys often contain both foreground and background interlopers due to line misidentification, which can bias the cosmological parameter estimation. In this paper, we present a method for correcting the interloper bias by using the joint-analysis of auto- and cross-power spectra of the main and the interloper samples. In particular, we can measure the interloper fractions from the cross-correlation between the interlopers and survey galaxies, because the true cross-correlation must be negligibly small. The estimated interloper fractions, in turn, remove the interloper bias in the cosmological parameter estimation. For example, in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) low-redshift ($z<0.5$) [O II] $\lambda3727$Å emitters contaminate high-redshift ($1.9<z<3.5$) Lyman-$α$ line emitters. We demonstrate that the joint-analysis method yields a high signal-to-noise ratio measurement of the interloper fractions while only marginally increasing the uncertainties in the cosmological parameters relative to the case without interlopers. We also show the same is true for the high-latitude spectroscopic survey of Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission where contamination occurs between the Balmer-$α$ line emitters at lower redshifts ($1.1<z<1.9$) and Oxygen ([O III] $\lambda5007$Å) line emitters at higher redshifts ($1.7<z<2.8$).

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Astro2020 Science White Paper: Black Holes Across Cosmic Time

Supermassive black holes are located at the center of most, if not all, massive galaxies. They follow close correlations with global properties of their host galaxies (scaling relations), and are thought to play a crucial role in galaxy evolution. Yet, we lack a complete understanding of fundamental aspects of their growth across cosmic time. In particular, we still do not understand: (1) whether black holes or their host galaxies grow faster and (2) what is the maximum mass that black holes can reach. The high angular resolution capability and sensitivity of 30-m class telescopes will revolutionize our understanding of the extreme end of the black hole and galaxy mass scale. With such facilities, we will be able to dynamically measure masses of the largest black holes and characterize galaxy properties out to redshift $z \sim 1.5$. Together with the evolution of black hole-galaxy scaling relations since $z \sim 1.5$, the maximum mass black hole will shed light on the main channels of black hole growth.

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Astro2020 Science White Paper: The Local Relics of of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds

We have compelling evidence for stellar-mass black holes (BHs) of ~5-80 M_sun that form through the death of massive stars. We also have compelling evidence for so-called supermassive BHs (10^5-10^10 M_sun) that are predominantly found in the centers of galaxies. We have very good reason to believe there must be BHs with masses in the gap between these ranges: the first ~10^9 M_sun BHs are observed only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, and all theoretically viable paths to making supermassive BHs require a stage of "intermediate" mass. However, no BHs have yet been reliably detected in the 100-10}^5 M_sun mass range. Uncovering these intermediate-mass BHs of 10^3-10^5 M_sun is within reach in the coming decade. In this white paper we highlight the crucial role that 30-m class telescopes will play in dynamically detecting intermediate-mass black holes, should they exist.

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Constraining Cosmology with Big Data Statistics of Cosmological Graphs

By utilizing large-scale graph analytic tools implemented in the modern Big Data platform, Apache Spark, we investigate the topological structure of gravitational clustering in five different universes produced by cosmological $N$-body simulations with varying parameters: (1) a WMAP 5-year compatible $Λ$CDM cosmology, (2) two different dark energy equation of state variants, and (3) two different cosmic matter density variants. For the Big Data calculations, we use a custom build of stand-alone Spark/Hadoop cluster at Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) and Dataproc Compute Engine in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with the sample size ranging from 7 millions to 200 millions. We find that among the many possible graph-topological measures, three simple ones: (1) the average of number of neighbors (the so-called average vertex degree) $α$, (2) closed-to-connected triple fraction (the so-called transitivity) $τ_Δ$, and (3) the cumulative number density $n_{s\ge5}$ of subcomponents with connected component size $s \ge 5$, can effectively discriminate among the five model universes. Since these graph-topological measures are in direct relation with the usual $n$-points correlation functions of the cosmic density field, graph-topological statistics powered by Big Data computational infrastructure opens a new, intuitive, and computationally efficient window into the dark Universe.

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Statistics of Two-point Correlation and Network Topology for Lyman Alpha Emitters at $z \approx 2.67$

We investigate the spatial distribution of Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) at $z \approx 2.67$, selected from the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS), using two-point statistics and topological diagnostics adopted from network science. We measure the clustering length, $r_0 \approx 4 h^{-1}$ Mpc, and the bias, $b_{LAE} = 2.2^{+0.2}_{-0.1}$. Fitting the clustering with halo occupation distribution (HOD) models results in two disparate possibilities: (1) where the fraction of central galaxies is $<$1% in halos of mass $>10^{12}$$M_\odot$; and (2) where the fraction is $\approx$20%. We refer to these two scenarios as the `Dusty Core Scenario' for Model#1 since most of central galaxies in massive halos are dead in Ly$α$ emission, and the `Pristine Core Scenario' for Model#2 since the central galaxies are bright in Ly$α$ emission. Traditional two-point statistics cannot distinguish between these disparate models given the current data sets. To overcome this degeneracy, we generate mock catalogs for each HOD model using a high resolution $N$-body simulation and adopt a network statistics approach, which provides excellent topological diagnostics for galaxy point distributions. We find three topological anomalies from the spatial distribution of observed LAEs, which are not reproduced by the HOD mocks. We find that Model#2 matches better all network statistics than Model#1, suggesting that the central galaxies in $> 10^{12} h^{-1} M_\odot$ halos at $z \approx 2.67$ need to be less dusty to be bright as LAEs, potentially implying some replenishing channels of pristine gas such as the cold mode accretion.

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Galaxy Protoclusters as Drivers of Cosmic Star-Formation History in the First 2 Gyr

Present-day clusters are massive halos containing mostly quiescent galaxies, while distant protoclusters are extended structures containing numerous star-forming galaxies. We investigate the implications of this fundamental change in a cosmological context using a set of N-body simulations and semi-analytic models. We find that the fraction of the cosmic volume occupied by all (proto)clusters increases by nearly three orders of magnitude from z=0 to z=7. We show that (proto)cluster galaxies are an important, and even dominant population at high redshift, as their expected contribution to the cosmic star-formation rate density rises (from 1% at z=0) to 20% at z=2 and 50% at z=10. Protoclusters thus provide a significant fraction of the cosmic ionizing photons, and may have been crucial in driving the timing and topology of cosmic reionization. Internally, the average history of cluster formation can be described by three distinct phases: at z~10-5, galaxy growth in protoclusters proceeded in an inside-out manner, with centrally dominant halos that are among the most active regions in the Universe; at z~5-1.5, rapid star formation occurred within the entire 10-20 Mpc structures, forming most of their present-day stellar mass; at z<~1.5, violent gravitational collapse drove these stellar contents into single cluster halos, largely erasing the details of cluster galaxy formation due to relaxation and virialization. Our results motivate observations of distant protoclusters in order to understand the rapid, extended stellar growth during Cosmic Noon, and their connection to reionization during Cosmic Dawn.

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