Regulating the Escape and Production of Ionizing Photons in Galaxies: From Cosmic Dawn to Cosmic Dusk

by Soumil Maulick (Stockholm University)

Wednesday 25 Mar 2026, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Hydrogen-ionizing or Lyman-continuum (LyC) photons produced in star-forming galaxies are believed to have played a central role in driving cosmic reionization. A key challenge is to understand both how efficiently galaxies produce these photons and the physical processes that allow them to escape into the intergalactic medium. Direct detections of escaping LyC radiation become increasingly difficult at high redshift due to the opacity of the intergalactic medium, making lower-redshift analogs an important laboratory for studying the physical processes that regulate LyC escape.

In this talk, I will present results from my PhD work using imaging data from the Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) to identify and study LyC-emitting galaxies at redshifts 1-1.5. I will discuss what these newly identified systems reveal about the mechanisms that regulate LyC leakage in galaxies.

Finally, I will briefly present ongoing work using JWST/MIRI observations of galaxies between redshifts 6 and 9 to study star-formation histories, and the production of ionizing photons during the Epoch of Reionization.