Galaxy evolution – observations
- Details
- Created: Wednesday, 03 June 2015 08:45
Galaxy Surveys
Our researchers are involved in several international collaborations based on multiwavelength surveys focused on the formation and evolution of normal galaxies and AGN: Chandra Deep Field South; Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH); Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS); EUCLID mission (WG "Galaxy evolution and AGNs"); Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS); Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF).
Other projects involve proprietary data from Galex, Spitzer, Herschel, TNG as well as public data from COSMOS and from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Among the main scientific goals pursued by our group: (a) study of spectral and morphological properties, luminosity function, star formation rate, stellar mass, energetic feedback processes, age, chemical enrichment and dust in high redshift galaxies; (b) study of galaxy evolution as a function of the environment and of their location in the large-scale structure of the Universe; (c) search of galaxies and AGN at the epoch of reionization (z>~7); (d) characterization of the ionizing radiation at redshift 3-4.5 from star forming galaxies; (e) spectral properties of obscured AGN and Compton-thick AGN, contribution to the extragalactic X-ray background from different AGN populations.
Contact Person: M. Nonino
Staff: A. Biviano, S. Cristiani, G. De Lucia, M. Girardi, P. Monaco
Postdoc:
PhD Students:
Galaxies in absorptions
Absorption features called Damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) systems are clouds of neutral gas which are observed in QSO spectra. DLAs are observed up to very high redshifts (z~4-5), which correspond to early cosmic epochs, when the Universe was only ~1-2 Gyr old. They represent one of the best probes to study proto-galaxies and stellar nucleosynthetic processes in the first phases of chemical evolution. DLAs have an average value of metallicity of the order of 1/20 the solar one, with a significant dispersion and a lower metallicity tail reaching 1/3000 Z⊙, (or [Fe/H] ~ -3.5).
Researchers at the Observatory works mainly on: the presence of dust, the relative ratio between alpha elements and iron peak elements, and elements of the CNO cycle. We follow also the behaviour of Ar which is sensitive to the ionization of the meta-galactic background.
Contact Person: P. Molaro
Staff: V. D'Odorico, G. Vladilo
Postdoc:
PhD Students: