Formation and Evolution of Galaxies: Observations in Infrared and other Wavelengths

    General
    Description

    This IAC research group carries out several extragalactic projects in different spectral ranges, using space as well as ground-based telescopes, to study the cosmological evolution of galaxies and the origin of nuclear activity in active galaxies. The group is a member of the international consortium which built the SPIRE instrument for the Herschel Space Observatory and of the European consortium which is developing the SAFARI instrument for the infrared space telescope SPICA of the space agencies ESA and JAXA.

    The main projects in 2018 were:

    a) High-redshift galaxies and quasars with far-infrared emission discovered with the Herschel Space Observatory in the HerMES and Herschel-ATLAS Key Projects.

    b) Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: BELLS GALLERY galaxies and very luminous Lyman alpha emitting galaxies.

    c) Participation in the development of the SAFARI instrument, one of the European contributions to the SPICA infrared space telescope.

    d) Discovery of the most distant individual star ever observed, in one of the fields of the "HST Frontier Fields".

    e) Search for supernovae in distant, gravitationally lensed galaxies.

    f) Several studies with GTC of absorption line systems in the line of sight to red quasars.

    Principal investigator
    Project staff
    Dr.
    Stefan Geier
    Collaborators
    Herschel SPIRE, HerMES, Herschel-ATLAS, SPICA, SAFARI, BELLS GALLERY, SERVS, DEEPDRILL, SDSS-IV y SHARDS Frontier Fields
    1. Marques-Chaves et al. (2018) present a study of the submillimeter galaxy HLock01 at z = 2.9574, one of the brightest gravitationally lensed sources discovered in the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. Detailed analysis of the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) rest-frame UV GTC OSIRIS spectrum shows complex kinematics of the gas.
    2. Rigopoulou et al. (2018) using new, Herschel spectroscopic observations of key far-infrared fine structure lines of the z 3 galaxy HLSW-01 derive gas-phase metallicities and find that the metallicities of z 3 submm-luminous galaxies are consistent with solar metallicities and that they appear to follow the mass–metallicity relation expected for z 3 systems.
    3. Cornachione et al. (2018) present a morphological study of 17 lensed Lyα emitter (LAE) galaxies of the BELLS GALLERY sample. The analysis combines the magnification effect of strong galaxy–galaxy lensing with the high resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope to achieve a physical resolution of ~80 pc for this 2 < z < 3 LAE sample.
    4. Oteo et al. (2018) report the identification of an extreme protocluster of galaxies in the early universe whose core (nicknamed Distant Red Core, DRC, because of its very red color in Herschel SPIRE bands) is formed by at least 10 dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs), spectroscopically confirmed to lie at z = 4.002 via detection of emission lines with ALMA and ATCA.
    5. Kelly et al. (2018) report the discovery of an individual star, Icarus, at redshift z = 1.49 magnified by more than × 2,000 by gravitational lensing of the galaxy cluster MACS J1149+222. Icarus is located in a spiral galaxy that is so far from Earth that its light has taken 9000 million years to reach the Earth.

    Related publications

    • HerMES: Cosmic Infrared Background Anisotropies and the Clustering of Dusty Star-forming Galaxies
      We present measurements of the auto- and cross-frequency power spectra of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) at 250, 350, and 500 μm (1200, 860, and 600 GHz) from observations totaling ~70 deg2 made with the SPIRE instrument aboard the Herschel Space Observatory. We measure a fractional anisotropy δI/I = 14% ± 4%, detecting signatures arising
      Viero, M. P. et al.

      Advertised on:

      7
      2013
      Citations
      152
    • The rapid assembly of an elliptical galaxy of 400 billion solar masses at a redshift of 2.3
      Stellar archaeology shows that massive elliptical galaxies formed rapidly about ten billion years ago with star-formation rates of above several hundred solar masses per year. Their progenitors are probably the submillimetre bright galaxies at redshifts z greater than 2. Although the mean molecular gas mass (5×1010 solar masses) of the
      Fu, Hai et al.

      Advertised on:

      6
      2013
      Citations
      124
    • The Herschel PEP/HerMES luminosity function - I. Probing the evolution of PACS selected Galaxies to z ≃ 4
      We exploit the deep and extended far-IR data sets (at 70, 100 and 160 μm) of the Herschel Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) PACS Evolutionary Probe (PEP) Survey, in combination with the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey data at 250, 350 and 500 μm, to derive the evolution of the rest-frame 35-, 60-, 90- and total infrared (IR) luminosity
      Gruppioni, C. et al.

      Advertised on:

      6
      2013
      Citations
      387
    • The z = 5 Quasar Luminosity Function from SDSS Stripe 82
      We present a measurement of the Type I quasar luminosity function at z = 5 using a large sample of spectroscopically confirmed quasars selected from optical imaging data. We measure the bright end (M 1450
      McGreer, Ian D. et al.

      Advertised on:

      5
      2013
      Citations
      205
    • The Herschel census of infrared SEDs through cosmic time
      Using Herschel data from the deepest SPIRE and PACS surveys (HerMES and PEP) in COSMOS, GOODS-S and GOODS-N, we examine the dust properties of infrared (IR)-luminous (LIR > 1010 L&sun;) galaxies at 0.1 z 2 and determine how these evolve with cosmic time. The unique angle of this work is the rigorous analysis of survey selection effects, making
      Symeonidis, M. et al.

      Advertised on:

      5
      2013
      Citations
      140
    • A dust-obscured massive maximum-starburst galaxy at a redshift of 6.34
      Massive present-day early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies probably gained the bulk of their stellar mass and heavy elements through intense, dust-enshrouded starbursts--that is, increased rates of star formation--in the most massive dark-matter haloes at early epochs. However, it remains unknown how soon after the Big Bang massive
      Riechers, Dominik A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      4
      2013
      Citations
      491
    • The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Luminosity and Color Dependence and Redshift Evolution
      We measure the luminosity and color dependence and the redshift evolution of galaxy clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Ninth Data Release. We focus on the projected two-point correlation function (2PCF) of subsets of its CMASS sample, which includes about 260,000 galaxies over ~3300 deg2 in the
      Thomas, Daniel et al.

      Advertised on:

      4
      2013
      Citations
      80
    • Inferring the mass of submillimetre galaxies by exploiting their gravitational magnification of background galaxies
      Dust emission at submillimetre wavelengths allows us to trace the early phases of star formation in the Universe. In order to understand the physical processes involved in this mode of star formation, it is essential to gain knowledge about the dark matter structures - most importantly their masses - that submillimetre galaxies live in. Here we use
      Conley, A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      3
      2013
      Citations
      57
    • The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
      The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg2 to measure
      Kauffmann, Guinevere et al.

      Advertised on:

      1
      2013
      Citations
      1000
    • HerMES: Candidate Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies and Lensing Statistics at Submillimeter Wavelengths
      We present a list of 13 candidate gravitationally lensed submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) from 95 deg2 of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey, a surface density of 0.14 ± 0.04 deg–2. The selected sources have 500 μm flux densities (S 500) greater than 100 mJy. Gravitational lensing is confirmed by follow-up observations in 9 of the 13
      Rigopoulou, D. et al.

      Advertised on:

      1
      2013
      Citations
      170
    • Evolution of the far-infrared luminosity functions in the Spitzer Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey
      We present new observational determination of the evolution of the rest-frame 70 and 160 μm and total infrared (TIR) galaxy luminosity functions (LFs) using 70 and 160 μm data from the Spitzer Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic (SWIRE) Legacy survey. The LFs were constructed for sources with spectroscopic redshifts only in the XMM-LSS and Lockman
      Afonso-Luis, A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      1
      2013
      Citations
      27
    • The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: ninth data release
      We present the Data Release 9 Quasar (DR9Q) catalog from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. The catalog includes all BOSS objects that were targeted as quasar candidates during the survey, are spectrocopically confirmed as quasars via visual inspection, have luminosities Mi[z = 2] -20.5 (in a
      Pâris, I. et al.

      Advertised on:

      12
      2012
      Citations
      249
    • The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
      The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) presents the first spectroscopic data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This ninth data release (DR9) of the SDSS project includes 535,995 new galaxy spectra (median z ~ 0.52), 102,100 new quasar spectra (median z ~ 2.32), and 90,897 new stellar spectra, along with the data
      Sheldon, Erin et al.

      Advertised on:

      12
      2012
      Citations
      1000
    • The Herschel ATLAS
      The Herschel ATLAS is the largest open-time key project that will be carried out on the Herschel Space Observatory. It will survey 570 deg of the extragalactic sky, 4 times larger than all the other Herschel extragalactic surveys combined, in five far-infrared and submillimeter bands. We describe the survey, the complementary multiwavelength data
      Vlahakis, C. et al.

      Advertised on:

      5
      2010
      Citations
      547
    • Measurements of CO Redshifts with Z-Spec for Lensed Submillimeter Galaxies Discovered in the H-ATLAS Survey
      We present new observations from Z-Spec, a broadband 185-305 GHz spectrometer, of five submillimeter bright lensed sources selected from the Herschel-Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey science demonstration phase catalog. We construct a redshift-finding algorithm using combinations of the signal to noise of all the lines falling in the Z
      Lupu, R. E. et al.

      Advertised on:

      10
      2012
      Citations
      88
    • The optical SN 2012bz associated with the long GRB 120422A
      Aims: The association of Type Ic supernovae (SNe) with long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is well established. We endeavor, through accurate ground-based observational campaigns, to characterize these SNe at increasingly high redshifts. Methods: We obtained a series of optical photometric and spectroscopic observations of the Type Ic SN 2012bz
      Melandri, A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2012
      Citations
      61
    • The SCUBA Half-Degree Extragalactic Survey (SHADES) - VIII. The nature of faint submillimetre galaxies in SHADES, SWIRE and SXDF surveys
      We present the optical-to-submillimetre spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for 33 radio and mid-infrared (mid-IR) identified submillimetre galaxies discovered via the SHADES 850-μm SCUBA imaging in the Subaru-XMM Deep Field (SXDF). Optical data for the sources come from the SXDF and mid- and far-IR fluxes from SWIRE. We obtain photometric
      Clements, D. L. et al.

      Advertised on:

      6
      2008
      Citations
      60
    • WINGS: a WIde-field nearby Galaxy-cluster survey. III. Deep near-infrared photometry of 28 nearby clusters
      Context: This is the third paper in a series devoted to the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long-term project aimed at gathering wide-field, multiband imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a complete sample of 77 X-ray selected, nearby clusters (0.04
      Valentinuzzi, T. et al.

      Advertised on:

      7
      2009
      Citations
      50
    • WINGS: A WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey. II. Deep optical photometry of 77 nearby clusters
      Context: This is the second paper of a series devoted to the WIde Field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long term project which is gathering wide-field, multi-band imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a complete sample of 77 X-ray selected, nearby clusters (0.04 z 0.07) located far from the galactic plane (|b|≥ 20°). The main
      Varela, J. et al.

      Advertised on:

      4
      2009
      Citations
      87
    • WINGS-SPE Spectroscopy in the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey
      Aims: We present the results from a comprehensive spectroscopic survey of the WINGS (WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey) clusters, a program called WINGS-SPE. The WINGS-SPE sample consists of 48 clusters, 22 of which are in the southern sky and 26 in the north. The main goals of this spectroscopic survey are: (1) to study the dynamics and
      Cava, A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      3
      2009
      Citations
      140

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