Final Report Summary - UPGAL (Understanding the Physics of Galaxy Formation and Evolution at High Redshift)
The UPGAL project has been carried out by expanding and extending the research avenues that our group had started and pioneered in galaxy formation and evolution. Its distinctive character is a truly and fully multi-wavelength approach. The proposed research project has been focused on exploring three different, but deeply interconnected, research lines, all resulting from observational advancements we had contributed during the very recent past by studying massive high redshift galaxies, centered on: (A) star formation and obscured AGN activity in the distant Universe; (B) molecular gas inside typical high-z galaxies; and (C) passive galaxies and clusters. We have used observations from a variety of facilities on earth and space to pursue this research. Most notably from the Herschel space telescope in the infrared, but also Hubble in the optical, Chandra and XMM for the X-ray. We have taken advantage of the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer (located on the French Alps) for millimeter wavelength interferometry, and of the ESO Very Large Telescopes in Chile. A large part of our research focused on using these datasets to address key uncertainties and advance understanding along the major three research lines.
Among our major results we have shown that the much higher activity of star formation in the distant Universe is accounted by the larger content of gas in the galaxies, rather than a result of increased interactions between galaxies. We have shown that different star formation laws apply to normal disk like galaxies as opposed to starburst galaxies undergoing merging events, unless the different dynamical times of the systems are taken into account. We have developed a unified simple framework describing the distribution of star formation and gas content in galaxies through cosmic time. We have shown the continuity of black hole growth and star formation. We have discovered the most distant galaxy cluster currently known and investigated its content.
Our group has published 38 papers directly related to this project, including one of our team members as first author or among the first co-authors. We have been presenting our results to a large number of international conferences: 24 for the PI only, mostly invited talks, and a similar numbers of presentations were given by postdocs and students working for this project.
Among our major results we have shown that the much higher activity of star formation in the distant Universe is accounted by the larger content of gas in the galaxies, rather than a result of increased interactions between galaxies. We have shown that different star formation laws apply to normal disk like galaxies as opposed to starburst galaxies undergoing merging events, unless the different dynamical times of the systems are taken into account. We have developed a unified simple framework describing the distribution of star formation and gas content in galaxies through cosmic time. We have shown the continuity of black hole growth and star formation. We have discovered the most distant galaxy cluster currently known and investigated its content.
Our group has published 38 papers directly related to this project, including one of our team members as first author or among the first co-authors. We have been presenting our results to a large number of international conferences: 24 for the PI only, mostly invited talks, and a similar numbers of presentations were given by postdocs and students working for this project.