Investigating the formation and evolution of the most massive galaxies and galaxy clusters in the Universe

研究宇宙中最大质量星系和星系团的形成和演化

• 批准号: 2579074
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2579074
• 关键词: Investigating; formation; evolution; most; massive

Elliptical galaxies are the most massive galaxies we observe in the Universe today and they are believed to have formed via a giant dust-obscured burst of star formation when the Universe was less than 2 billion years old. Elliptical galaxies are usually found in the core of galaxy clusters, suggesting a close link between the formation of those galaxies and that of galaxy clusters.Detecting elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters in their forming process requires observations at far-infrared to sub-millimetre and millimetre wavelengths in order to "see" the dust-reprocessed starlight from the new born stars. Cardiff University (CU) is at the forefront in the study of the dusty Universe. Over the past decades our School of Physics and Astronomy has provided a key contribution to both the construction and the data exploitation of instruments like the Herschel space observatory and the SCUBA-2 camera, which, together, have delivered the largest samples of dust-obscured galaxies to date.New upcoming facilities, like the millimetre cameras MUSCAT (built at CU) and TolTEC (CU is part of the TolTEC consortium) on the Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT) in Mexico, and the Simons Observatory (SO) in Chile (CU is an SO partner Institute), just to cite a few, will allow us to extend the detection of forming ellipticals (several of which will be gravitationally lensed) and of dusty proto-clusters out to the highest redshifts and to characterize both existing and new sources. In this project, the student will investigate the formation and evolution of massive ellipticals, and of the cluster core they inhabit, by contributing to the analysis and interpretation of both existing and new data. He/she will measure the statistical properties (number counts, luminosity functions, redshift distributions etc.) of dust-obscured galaxies and interpret the results using a physical semi-analytic model developed by our Italian collaborators. The student will contribute to improving the model, by populating dark matter halos in N-body simulations consistently with the output of the equations of the model in order to generate realistic maps of the large scale distribution of proto-ellipticals and proto-clusters. He/she will then compare such maps with observations to further constrain the model and will use them to make forecasts for studies with future instruments/observatories.During the project the student will also contribute to the writing of follow-up proposals to characterise interesting sources detected with MUSCAT/TolTEC and SO, such as dusty proto-clusters and gravitationally lensed dust-obscured galaxies.

椭圆星系是我们今天在宇宙中观察到的最大质量的星系，人们相信它们是在宇宙年龄不到 20 亿年时通过一次巨大的尘埃遮蔽的恒星形成爆发而形成的。椭圆星系通常出现在星系团的核心，这表明这些星系的形成与星系团的形成之间存在密切联系。探测椭圆星系和星系团的形成过程需要远红外到亚毫米和毫米级的观测波长，以便“看到”来自新生恒星的经过尘埃再处理的星光。卡迪夫大学（CU）在尘埃宇宙研究方面处于领先地位。在过去的几十年里，我们的物理与天文学学院为赫歇尔空间天文台和 SCUBA-2 相机等仪器的建造和数据开发做出了重要贡献，这些仪器共同提供了最大的尘埃遮挡样本即将推出的新设施，例如墨西哥大型毫米望远镜 (LMT) 上的毫米相机 MUSCAT（在 CU 制造）和 TolTEC（CU 是 TolTEC 联盟的一部分），仅举几例，智利的西蒙斯天文台 (SO)（CU 是 SO 的合作伙伴研究所）将使我们能够扩展对正在形成的椭圆星团（其中几个将被引力透镜）和尘埃原星团的探测到最高的红移并表征现有和新的来源。在这个项目中，学生将通过对现有数据和新数据的分析和解释，研究大质量椭圆体及其所在星团核心的形成和演化。他/她将测量被尘埃遮蔽的星系的统计特性（计数、光度函数、红移分布等），并使用我们的意大利合作者开发的物理半解析模型解释结果。学生将通过在 N 体模拟中填充与模型方程的输出一致的暗物质光环，从而为改进模型做出贡献，以便生成原始椭圆体和原始星团的大规模分布的真实地图。然后，他/她将这些地图与观测结果进行比较，以进一步约束模型，并使用它们对未来仪器/天文台的研究进行预测。在项目期间，学生还将参与撰写后续提案，以描述有趣的来源用 MUSCAT/TolTEC 和 SO 检测到，例如尘埃原星系团和引力透镜尘埃遮蔽的星系。