Lyman-alpha emission from star-forming galaxies provides a powerful and a practical tool to probe the epoch of reionization— a period within the first billion years when most of the neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium was ionized. Our recent results show a significant decline in the number of strong Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies at redshift z >7 which suggests that we are already witnessing reionization in-progress by this redshift. If true, this result has severe implications for the upcoming telescopes including the James Webb Space Telescope for discovering first-generation galaxies using Lyman-alpha emisssion as a redshift tracer. In this talk, Dr. Tilvi will discuss our current efforts and challenges in probing the epoch of reionization.
