Objective
This project is aimed to support a comprehensive survey of the early phases of galaxy evolution to better understand how galaxies formed and evolved. The goal is to focus on the redshift range 2.5
This large sample of galaxies will enable a number of detailed studies, most importantly: (i) the evolution of the global star formation rate and the build-up of the mass for different galaxy populations, (ii) the study of very young galaxies and search for the long sought PopIII stellar populations, (iii) the evolution of the morphology of galaxies as they are building up, (iv) the clustering of galaxies to infer the mass growth of underlying dark matter halos, (v) the contribution of mergers to the mass growth of galaxies .
The support from the ERC will be used to conduct efficient exploitation of this leading survey. The survey observations and data processing will be performed with new generation methods. The data will be secured and accessed via an open database. Dedicated analysis tools will be developed to firmly establish the properties of galaxies at these epochs. This will lead to the elaboration of a comprehensive scenario for early galaxy evolution.
In supporting this project the ERC will help maintain European leadership in this field, developing expertise for the coming new infrastructure at ESO and ESA.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
Call for proposal
ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
ERC-AG - ERC Advanced GrantHost institution
13284 Marseille
France