Adam Muzzin - Charting the Growth of Early Galaxies with JWST’s Medium Bands

Building a complete census of galaxies across cosmic history requires accurate measurements of their redshifts, stellar masses, and star formation. Medium-band imaging provides a powerful and efficient approach: by sampling galaxy spectral energy distributions at relatively high resolution, it provides low-resolution spectroscopy, enabling precise photometric redshifts and improved constraints on stellar population properties. For more than two decades, medium-band surveys have made major contributions to our understanding of galaxy formation, from identifying early quenched galaxies to charting the growth of the galaxy population over cosmic time.  JWST's NIRCam instrument, equipped with 12 medium-band filters, now brings this approach to the early universe, opening a new window on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the first billion years. I will present results from early JWST medium-band programs that reveal the surprisingly early emergence of dust and uncover previously missed populations, including little red dots (LRDs) and "sleeper" galaxies. I will then present results from the ongoing JWST MINERVA Treasury survey, which uses medium bands to trace galaxy growth across more than 97% of cosmic history and to build a complete census of various galaxy populations and active galactic nuclei.