Objective "Gas accretion and galactic winds are two of the most important and poorly understood ingredients of models for the formation and evolution of galaxies. We propose to take advantage of two unique opportunities to embark on a multi-disciplinary program to advance our understanding of the circumgalactic medium (CGM).We will use MUSE, a massive optical integral field spectrograph that we helped to develop and that will be commissioned on the VLT in 2012, to study the CGM in both absorption and emission. We will use 200 hours of guaranteed time to carry out deep redshift surveys of fields centred on bright z≈3.5 and z≈5 QSOs. This will yield hundreds of faint galaxies (mainly Lyα emitters) within 250 kpc of the lines of sight to the background QSOs, an order of magnitude increase compared to the best existing sample (bright, z≈2.3 galaxies). This will allow us to map the CGM in absorption in 3-D using HI and metal lines and to identify, for the first time, the counterparts to most metal absorbers. MUSE will also enable us to detect Lyα emission from the denser CGM (also using another 300 hours of guaranteed time targeting deep HST fields) and thus to directly explore its connection with galaxies and QSO absorbers.We will use the new supercomputer of the Virgo consortium to carry out cosmological hydro simulations that contain 1-2 orders of magnitude more resolution elements than the largest existing (spatially adaptive) runs. We will use the results of our previous work to guide our choice of parameters in order to obtain a better match to the observed mass function of galaxies. In parallel, we will carry out a complementary program of zoomed simulations of individual galaxies. These will have the physics and resolution to include a cold gas phase and hence to bypass much of the ""subgrid"" physics used in the cosmological runs. Both types of simulations will be used to study the physics of gas flows around galaxies and to guide the interpretation of our observations." Fields of science engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcomputer hardwaresupercomputers 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-2011-StG_20101014 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant Coordinator UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN Address Rapenburg 70 2311 EZ Leiden Netherlands See on map Region West-Nederland Zuid-Holland Agglomeratie Leiden en Bollenstreek Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Tonnis Brouwer (Mr.) Principal investigator Joop Schaye (Dr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window EU contribution No data Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN Netherlands EU contribution € 1 496 400,00 Address Rapenburg 70 2311 EZ Leiden See on map Region West-Nederland Zuid-Holland Agglomeratie Leiden en Bollenstreek Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Tonnis Brouwer (Mr.) Principal investigator Joop Schaye (Dr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Other funding No data
