ZoomInTheDust · Zoom-in on the dust-oscured phase of galaxy formation with gravitational lenses

Zoom-in on the dust-oscured phase of galaxy formation with gravitational lenses

This project exploits gravitational lensing to investigate the early, dust-obscured, phase in the formation of elliptical galaxies in order to better understand the mechanisms driving their intense star formation and their subsequent evolution. Elliptical galaxies are in fact the oldest and most massive galaxies observed in the Universe today and, as such, they represent a challenge for the standard bottom-up scenario for dark matter structure formation, according to which massive galaxies formed late. The early stages of the formation of elliptical galaxies are best probed at far-IR/sub-mm/mm wavelengths, where the UV/optical radiation of the newly formed stars is reprocessed by dust. The project exploits observations at those wavelengths performed with the Herschel Space Observatory as part of the Cardiff-led Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS) to identify proto-ellipticals that have been gravitationally lensed. The identification of lensing events is done using a new methodology I proposed and validated on the first data collected with H-ATLAS. Thanks to the increase in spatial resolution and in apparent luminosity provided by gravitational lensing, the derived sample of lensed proto-ellipticals is used to test different scenarios of galaxy formation. The project has three main objectives: 1. Generating a large sample of gravitationally lensed, dusty star forming, proto-ellipticals from the Herschel-ATLAS data 2. Writing a state-of-the-art lens modelling code that can deal with both imaging and interferometric data. 3. Applying the code to available near-infrared/sub-millimetre/millimetre data of lensed proto-ellipticals. 4. Testing models for the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies against the new observational results.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз