No Arabic abstract
This article is based on an invited talk given by V. P. Kulkarni at the 8th Cosmic Dust meeting. Dust has a profound effect on the physics and chemistry of the interstellar gas in galaxies and on the appearance of galaxies. Understanding the cosmic evolution of dust with time is therefore crucial for understanding the evolution of galaxies. Despite the importance of interstellar dust, very little is known about its nature and composition in distant galaxies. We summarize the results of our ongoing programs using observations of distant quasars to obtain better constraints on dust grains in foreground galaxies that happen to lie along the quasar sightlines. These observations consist of a combination of mid-infrared data obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical/UV data obtained with ground-based telescopes and/or the Hubble Space Telescope. The mid-IR data target the 10 $mu$m and 18 $mu$m silicate absorption features, while the optical/UV data allow determinations of element depletions, extinction curves, 2175 {AA} bumps, etc. Measurements of such properties in absorption-selected galaxies with redshifts ranging from $zsim0$ to $z>2$ provide constraints on the evolution of interstellar dust over the past $> 10$ Gyr. The optical depth of the 10 $mu$m silicate absorption feature ($tau_{10}$) in these galaxies is correlated with the amount of reddening along the sightline. But there are indications [e.g., based on the $tau_{10}$ /$E(B-V)$ ratio and possible grain crystallinity] that the dust in these distant galaxies differs in structure and composition from the dust in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. We briefly discuss the implications of these results for the evolution of galaxies and their star formation history.
We analyse maps of the spatially-resolved nebular emission of $approx$1500 star-forming galaxies at $zapprox0.6$-$2.2$ from deep KMOS and MUSE observations to measure the average shape of their rotation curves. We use these to test claims for declining rotation curves at large radii in galaxies at $zapprox1$-$2$ that have been interpreted as evidence for an absence of dark matter. We show that the shape of the average rotation curves, and the extent to which they decline beyond their peak velocities, depends upon the normalisation prescription used to construct the average curve. Normalising in size by the galaxy stellar disk-scale length after accounting for seeing effects ($R_{rm{d}}^{prime}$), we construct stacked position-velocity diagrams that trace the average galaxy rotation curve out to $6R_{rm{d}}^{prime}$ ($approx$13 kpc, on average). Combining these curves with average HI rotation curves for local systems, we investigate how the shapes of galaxy rotation curves evolve over $approx$10 Gyr. The average rotation curve for galaxies binned in stellar mass, stellar surface mass density and/or redshift is approximately flat, or continues to rise, out to at least $6R_{rm{d}}^{prime}$. We find a trend between the outer slopes of galaxies rotation curves and their stellar mass surface densities, with the higher surface density systems exhibiting flatter rotation curves. Drawing comparisons with hydrodynamical simulations, we show that the average shapes of the rotation curves for our sample of massive, star-forming galaxies at $zapprox0$-$2.2$ are consistent with those expected from $Lambda$CDM theory and imply dark matter fractions within $6R_{rm{d}}$ of at least $approx60$ percent.
We present the KMOS Galaxy Evolution Survey (KGES), a $K$-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) study of the H$alpha$ and [NII] emission from 288 $K$ band-selected galaxies at $1.2 lesssim z lesssim 1.8$, with stellar masses in the range $log_{10}(M_{*}/rm{M}_{odot})approx$9-11.5. In this paper, we describe the survey design, present the sample, and discuss the key properties of the KGES galaxies. We combine KGES with appropriately matched samples at lower redshifts from the KMOS Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS) and the SAMI Galaxy Survey. Accounting for the effects of sample selection, data quality, and analysis techniques between surveys, we examine the kinematic characteristics and angular momentum content of star-forming galaxies at $zapprox1.5$, $approx1$ and $approx0$. We find that stellar mass, rather than redshift, most strongly correlates with the disc fraction amongst star-forming galaxies at $z lesssim 1.5$, observing only a modest increase in the prevalence of discs between $zapprox1.5$ and $zapprox0.04$ at fixed stellar mass. Furthermore, typical star-forming galaxies follow the same median relation between specific angular momentum and stellar mass, regardless of their redshift, with the normalisation of the relation depending more strongly on how disc-like a galaxys kinematics are. This suggests that massive star-forming discs form in a very similar manner across the $approx$ 10 Gyr encompassed by our study and that the inferred link between the angular momentum of galaxies and their haloes does not change significantly across the stellar mass and redshift ranges probed in this work.
Present-day clusters are massive halos containing mostly quiescent galaxies, while distant protoclusters are extended structures containing numerous star-forming galaxies. We investigate the implications of this fundamental change in a cosmological context using a set of N-body simulations and semi-analytic models. We find that the fraction of the cosmic volume occupied by all (proto)clusters increases by nearly three orders of magnitude from z=0 to z=7. We show that (proto)cluster galaxies are an important, and even dominant population at high redshift, as their expected contribution to the cosmic star-formation rate density rises (from 1% at z=0) to 20% at z=2 and 50% at z=10. Protoclusters thus provide a significant fraction of the cosmic ionizing photons, and may have been crucial in driving the timing and topology of cosmic reionization. Internally, the average history of cluster formation can be described by three distinct phases: at z~10-5, galaxy growth in protoclusters proceeded in an inside-out manner, with centrally dominant halos that are among the most active regions in the Universe; at z~5-1.5, rapid star formation occurred within the entire 10-20 Mpc structures, forming most of their present-day stellar mass; at z<~1.5, violent gravitational collapse drove these stellar contents into single cluster halos, largely erasing the details of cluster galaxy formation due to relaxation and virialization. Our results motivate observations of distant protoclusters in order to understand the rapid, extended stellar growth during Cosmic Noon, and their connection to reionization during Cosmic Dawn.
Typical galaxies emit about one third of their energy in the infrared. The origin of this emission reprocessed starlight absorbed by interstellar dust grains and reradiated as thermal emission in the infrared. In particularly dusty galaxies, such as starburst galaxies, the fraction of energy emitted in the infrared can be as high as 90%. Dust emission is found to be an excellent tracer of the beginning and end stages of a stars life, where dust is being produced by post-main-sequence stars, subsequently added to the interstellar dust reservoir, and eventually being consumed by star and planet formation. This work reviews the current understanding of the size and properties of this interstellar dust reservoir, by using the Large Magellanic Cloud as an example, and what can be learned about the dust properties and star formation in galaxies from this dust reservoir, using SPICA, building on previous work performed with the Herschel and Spitzer Space Telescopes, as well as the Infrared Space Observatory.
We present an analysis of the physical and dynamical states of two sets of EAGLE zoom simulations of galaxy haloes, one at high redshift ($z=2-3$) and the other at low redshift ($z=0$), with masses of $approx 10^{12} M_{odot}$. Our focus is how the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of these $L^*$ star-forming galaxies change over the last 10 Gyr. We find that the high-$z$ CGM is almost equally divided between the cool ($T<10^5$ K) and hot ($Tgeq 10^5$ K) phases, while the low-$z$ hot CGM phase contains $5times$ more mass. The high-$z$ hot CGM contains 60% more metals than the cool CGM, while the low-$z$ cool CGM contains 35% more metals than the hot CGM content. The metals are evenly distributed radially between the hot and cool phases throughout the high-$z$ CGM. At high $z$, the CGM volume is dominated by hot outflows, cool gas is mainly inflowing, but cool metals are flowing outward. At low $z$, the cool metals dominate the interior and the hot metals are more prevalent at larger radii. The low-$z$ cool CGM has tangential motions consistent with rotational support out to $0.2 R_{200}$, often exhibiting $r approx 40$ kpc disc-like structures. The low-$z$ hot CGM has several times greater angular momentum than the cool CGM, and a more flattened radial density profile than the high-$z$ hot CGM. This study verifies that, just as galaxies demonstrate significant evolutionary stages over cosmic time, the gaseous haloes surrounding them also undergo considerable changes of their own both in physical characteristics of density, temperature and metallicity, and dynamic properties of velocity and angular momentum.