COSMOS-Web: Mapping Large Scale Structure Across Cosmic Time

COSMOS-Web is an approved 218-hour JWST Cycle 1 treasury program that will map a contiguous 0.6 deg² area with NIRCam and a total 0.2 deg² area with MIRI in parallel mode observations. The primary science goals of the COSMOS-Web survey are to:

1. revolutionize our understanding of reionization’s spatial distribution, environments, and drivers at early stages by pioneering the detection of thousands of galaxies in the epoch of reionization (spanning 6<z<11),

2. identify hundreds of the rarest quiescent galaxies in the first 2 Gyr (z>4) to place stringent constraints on the formation of the Universe’s most massive (M*>10¹⁰ M_sun) galaxies, and

3. directly measure the evolution of the stellar mass to halo mass relation out to z~2.5 and its relationship to galaxies’ star formation histories and morphologies.

With such a large field-of-view, COSMOS-Web will uniquely facilitate the mapping of large scale structure in the cosmic web over a total 50 million Mpc³. We will present detailed predictions and measurables for these three primary science objectives and their relationship to large scale structure, summarizing the major anticipated contributions of COSMOS-Web to galaxy formation and evolution.