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

    • Rise of the Titans: A Dusty, Hyper-luminous “870 μm Riser” Galaxy at z ∼ 6

      We report the detection of ADFS-27, a dusty, starbursting major merger at a redshift of z = 5.655, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ADFS-27 was selected from Herschel/Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) and APEX/LABOCA data as an extremely red “870 μm riser” (i.e., {S}250μ {{m}}< {S}350μ {{m}}< {S}500μ {

      Riechers, D. A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2017
      Citations
      79
    • Tracing the Evolution of Dust Obscured Star Formation and Accretion Back to the Reionisation Epoch with SPICA

      Our current knowledge of star formation and accretion luminosity at high redshift (z > 3-4), as well as the possible connections between them, relies mostly on observations in the rest-frame ultraviolet, which are strongly affected by dust obscuration. Due to the lack of sensitivity of past and current infrared instrumentation, so far it has not

      Gruppioni, C. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2017
      Citations
      21
    • SHARDS Frontier Fields: Physical Properties of a Low-mass Lyα Emitter at z = 5.75

      We analyze the properties of a multiply imaged Lyα (Lyα) emitter at z = 5.75 identified through SHARDS Frontier Fields intermediate-band imaging of the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) cluster Abell 370. The source, A370-L57, has low intrinsic luminosity (M UV ∼ ‑16.5), steep UV spectral index (β = ‑2.4 ± 0.1), and extreme rest-frame equivalent width

      Hernán-Caballero, A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2017
      Citations
      13
    • SPICA and the Chemical Evolution of Galaxies: The Rise of Metals and Dust

      The physical processes driving the chemical evolution of galaxies in the last 11Gyr cannot be understood without directly probing the dust-obscured phase of star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei. This phase, hidden to optical tracers, represents the bulk of the star formation and black hole accretion activity in galaxies at 1 < z < 3

      Fernández-Ontiveros, J. A. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2017
      Citations
      21
    • The High AV Quasar Survey: A z = 2.027 metal-rich damped Lyman-α absorber towards a red quasar at z = 3.21

      It is important to understand the selection effects behind the quasar samples to fully exploit the potential of quasars as probes of cosmic chemical evolution and the internal gas dynamics of galaxies; in particular, it is vital to understand whether the selection criteria exclude foreground galaxies with certain properties, most importantly a high

      Fynbo, J. P. U. et al.

      Advertised on:

      9
      2017
      Citations
      14
    • GRB 161219B/SN 2016jca: A low-redshift gamma-ray burst supernova powered by radioactive heating

      Since the first discovery of a broad-lined type Ic supernova (SN) with a long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) in 1998, fewer than fifty GRB-supernovae (SNe) have been discovered. The intermediate-luminosity Swift GRB 161219B and its associated supernova SN 2016jca, which occurred at a redshift of z = 0.1475, represents only the seventh GRB-SN to

      Cano, Z. et al.

      Advertised on:

      9
      2017
      Citations
      50
    • Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. VII. Understanding the Ultraviolet Anomaly in NGC 5548 with X-Ray Spectroscopy

      During the Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project observations of NGC 5548, the continuum and emission-line variability became decorrelated during the second half of the six-month-long observing campaign. Here we present Swift and Chandra X-ray spectra of NGC 5548 obtained as part of the campaign. The Swift spectra show that

      Mathur, S. et al.

      Advertised on:

      9
      2017
      Citations
      34
    • Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe

      We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache

      Mao, Shude et al.

      Advertised on:

      7
      2017
      Citations
      1000
    • A Spectroscopic Follow-up Program of Very Massive Galaxies at 3 < z < 4: Confirmation of Spectroscopic Redshifts, and a High Fraction of Powerful AGNs

      We present the analysis and results of a spectroscopic follow-up program of a mass-selected sample of six galaxies at 3< z< 4 using data from Keck-NIRPSEC and VLT-Xshooter. We confirm the z> 3 redshifts for half of the sample through the detection of strong nebular emission lines, and improve the z phot accuracy for the remainder of the sample

      Marsan, Z. Cemile et al.

      Advertised on:

      6
      2017
      Citations
      40
    • Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. V. Optical Spectroscopic Campaign and Emission-line Analysis for NGC 5548

      We present the results of an optical spectroscopic monitoring program targeting NGC 5548 as part of a larger multiwavelength reverberation mapping campaign. The campaign spanned 6 months and achieved an almost daily cadence with observations from five ground-based telescopes. The Hβ and He ii λ4686 broad emission-line light curves lag that of the

      Pei, L. et al.

      Advertised on:

      3
      2017
      Citations
      101
    • Dust in the Reionization Era: ALMA Observations of a z = 8.38 Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy

      We report on the detailed analysis of a gravitationally lensed Y-band dropout, A2744_YD4, selected from deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging in the Frontier Field cluster Abell 2744. Band 7 observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) indicate the proximate detection of a significant 1 mm continuum flux suggesting the

      Laporte, N. et al.

      Advertised on:

      3
      2017
      Citations
      265
    • Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project.VI. Reverberating Disk Models for NGC 5548

      We conduct a multiwavelength continuum variability study of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 5548 to investigate the temperature structure of its accretion disk. The 19 overlapping continuum light curves (1158 \mathringA to 9157 \mathringA ) combine simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope, Swift, and ground-based observations over a 180 day period from 2014

      Starkey, D. et al.

      Advertised on:

      1
      2017
      Citations
      76
    • Discovery of a Very Bright and Intrinsically Very Luminous, Strongly Lensed Lyα Emitting Galaxy at z = 2.82 in the BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey

      We report the discovery of a very bright (r = 20.16), highly magnified, and yet intrinsically very luminous Lyα emitter (LAE) at z=2.82. This system comprises four images in the observer plane with a maximum separation of ∼ 6\prime\prime and it is lensed by a z=0.55 massive early-type galaxy. It was initially identified in the Baryon Oscillation

      Marques-Chaves, R. et al.

      Advertised on:

      1
      2017
      Citations
      15
    • Environment of the Submillimeter-bright Massive Starburst HFLS3 at z ~ 6.34

      We describe the search for Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) near the submillimeter-bright starburst galaxy HFLS3 at z = 6.34 and a study on the environment of this massive galaxy during the end of reionization. We performed two independent selections of LBGs on images obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

      Laporte, N. et al.

      Advertised on:

      9
      2015
      Citations
      6
    • HerMES: ALMA Imaging of Herschel-selected Dusty Star-forming Galaxies

      The Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) has identified large numbers of dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) over a wide range in redshift. A detailed understanding of these DSFGs is hampered by the limited spatial resolution of Herschel. We present 870 μm 0.″45 resolution imaging obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter

      Bussmann, R. S. et al.

      Advertised on:

      10
      2015
      Citations
      94
    • The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III

      The third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) took data from 2008 to 2014 using the original SDSS wide-field imager, the original and an upgraded multi-object fiber-fed optical spectrograph, a new near-infrared high-resolution spectrograph, and a novel optical interferometer. All of the data from SDSS-III are now made public. In

      Alam, S. et al.

      Advertised on:

      7
      2015
      Citations
      1000
    • HerMES: Current Cosmic Infrared Background Estimates Can Be Explained by Known Galaxies and Their Faint Companions at z < 4

      We report contributions to cosmic infrared background (CIB) intensities originating from known galaxies and their faint companions at submillimeter wavelengths. Using the publicly available UltraVISTA catalog and maps at 250, 350, and 500 μm from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey, we perform a novel measurement that exploits the fact

      Viero, M. P. et al.

      Advertised on:

      8
      2015
      Citations
      16
    • GLACE survey: OSIRIS/GTC tuneable filter Hα imaging of the rich galaxy cluster ZwCl 0024.0+1652 at z = 0.395. I. Survey presentation, TF data reduction techniques, and catalogue

      The cores of clusters at 0 ≲ z ≲ 1 are dominated by quiescent early-type galaxies, whereas the field is dominated by star-forming late-type galaxies. Clusters grow through the accretion of galaxies and groups from the surrounding field, which implies that galaxy properties, notably the star formation ability, are altered as they fall into overdense

      Sánchez-Portal, M. et al.

      Advertised on:

      6
      2015
      Citations
      14
    • Frontier Fields: Combining HST, VLT, and Spitzer data to explore the z ~ 8 Universe behind the lensing cluster MACSJ0416.1-2403

      Context. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Frontier Fields (HFFs) project started at the end of 2013 with the aim of providing extremely deep images of six massive galaxy clusters. One of the main goals of this program is to push several telescopes to their limits to provide the best current view of the earliest stages of the Universe. The analysis

      Laporte, N. et al.

      Advertised on:

      3
      2015
      Citations
      48
    • A Far-infrared Spectroscopic Survey of Intermediate Redshift (Ultra) Luminous Infrared Galaxies

      We present Herschel far-IR photometry and spectroscopy as well as ground-based CO observations of an intermediate redshift (0.21 1 is already significant by z ~ 0.3.

      Magdis, G. E. et al.

      Advertised on:

      11
      2014
      Citations
      66

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