Clusters And LENsing of Distant Sources

Objective

Some of the primary questions in extragalactic astronomy concern the formation and evolution of galaxies in the distant Universe. In particular, little is known about the less luminous (and therefore less massive) galaxy populations, which are currently missed from large observing surveys and could contribute significantly to the overall star formation happening at early times. One way to overcome the current observing limitations prior to the arrival of the future James Webb Space Telescope or the European Extremely Large Telescopes is to use the natural magnification of strong lensing clusters to look at distant sources with an improved sensitivity and resolution.

The aim of CALENDS is to build and study in great details a large sample of accurately-modelled, strongly lensed galaxies at high redshift (1We will look for scaling relations between the stellar, gas and dust parameters, and compare them with known relations for lower redshift and more massive galaxy samples. For the most extended sources, we will be able to spatially resolve their inner properties, and compare the results of individual regions with predictions from simulations. We will look into key physical processes: star formation, gas accretion, inflows and outflows, in these distant sources.

Fields of science

• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyextragalactic astronomy
• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysicsdark matter
• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyobservational astronomy

Programme(s)

• FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

• ERC-SG-PE9 - ERC Starting Grant - Universe sciences

Call for proposal

ERC-2013-StG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Host institution

Beneficiaries (1)