Related papers: A dominant population of optically invisible massi…
To understand the evolution of galaxies, we need to know as accurately as possible how many galaxies were present in the Universe at different epochs. Galaxies in the young Universe have hitherto mainly been identified using their expected…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
The largest galaxies acquire their mass early on, when the Universe is still youthful. Cold streams violently feed these young galaxies a vast amount of fresh gas, resulting in very efficient star formation. Using a well resolved…
In the early Universe finding massive galaxies that have stopped forming stars present an observational challenge as their rest-frame ultraviolet emission is negligible and they can only be reliably identified by extremely deep…
Over the past decades, rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) observations have provided large samples of UV luminous galaxies at redshift (z) greater than 6, during the so-called epoch of reionization. While a few of these UV identified galaxies…
Recent JWST observations have revealed an unexpected abundance of massive galaxy candidates in the early Universe, extending further in redshift and to lower luminosity than what had previously been found by sub-millimeter surveys. These…
The formation of galaxies by gradual hierarchical co-assembly of baryons and cold dark matter halos is a fundamental paradigm underpinning modern astrophysics and predicts a strong decline in the number of massive galaxies at early cosmic…
Our current understanding of the star formation histories of early-type galaxies is reviewed, in the context of recent observational studies of their ultra-violet (UV) properties. Combination of UV and optical spectro-photometric data…
I discuss recent theoretical work on the formation and evolution of galaxies paying particular attention to the ability of current models to make detailed comparisons with observations of the galaxy population both nearby and at high…
This is a summary of arguments in favor of observing high-redshift star formation in the UV as presented at the Ringberg meeting in September 2000. The most rapidly star-forming galaxies are very dusty, easier to detect at 850um than in the…
We present near-infrared spectroscopic confirmations of a sample of 16 photometrically-selected galaxies with stellar masses log(M_star/M_sun) > 11 at redshift z > 3 from the XMM-VIDEO and COSMOS-UltraVISTA fields using Keck/MOSFIRE as part…
We present the census of massive (log(M$_{*}$/M$_{\odot}$)$\geq 11$) galaxies at $3<z<6$ identified over the COSMOS/UltraVISTA Ultra-Deep field stripes: consisting of $\approx100$ and $\approx20$ high-confidence candidates at $3<z<4$ and…
Early-type galaxies are considered to be the end-products of massive galaxy formation. Optical spectroscopic studies reveal that massive early-type galaxies formed the bulk of their stars over short timescales (1<Gyr) and at high redshift…
At redshift z = 2, when the Universe was just three billion years old, half of the most massive galaxies were extremely compact and had already exhausted their fuel for star formation(1-4). It is believed that they were formed in intense…
The most massive galaxies in the present-day Universe are found to lie in the centres of rich clusters. They have old, coeval stellar populations suggesting that the bulk of their stars must have formed at early epochs in spectacular…
According to the current understanding of cosmic structure formation, the precursors of the most massive structures in the Universe began to form shortly after the Big Bang, in regions corresponding to the largest fluctuations in the cosmic…
Observational evidence has been mounting over the past decade that at least some luminous (~2 L*) galaxies have formed nearly all of their stars within a short period of time only 1-2x10^9 years after the Big Bang. These are examples of the…
In the past decade, our understanding of galaxy evolution has been revolutionized by the discovery that luminous, dusty, starburst galaxies were 1,000 times more abundant in the early Universe than at present. It has, however, been…
Understanding the formation history of massive galaxies is one of most popular and longstanding problems in astronomy, with observations and theory addressing how and when these systems assembled. Since the most massive galaxies in today's…
Deep submillimetre surveys have successfully detected distant, star-forming galaxies, enshrouded in vast quantities of dust and which emit most of their energy at far infrared wavelengths. These luminous galaxies are an important…