Related papers: The emergence of passive galaxies in the early Uni…
Using cosmological N-body simulations of critical (SCDM) and open (Omega_0=0.3, OCDM) cold dark matter models we have identified dark matter halos which are associated with the progenitors of present day bright early type galaxies. By…
The evolution of the number density of galaxies in the universe, and thus also the total number of galaxies, is a fundamental question with implications for a host of astrophysical problems including galaxy evolution and cosmology. However…
Massive quiescent galaxies have much smaller physical sizes at high redshift than today. The strong evolution of galaxy size may be caused by progenitor bias, major and minor mergers, adiabatic expansion, and/or renewed star formation, but…
The evolution of masses and sizes of passive (early-type) galaxies with redshift provides ideal constraints to galaxy formation models. These parameters can in principle be obtained for large galaxy samples from multi-band photometry alone.…
Spectroscopic + photometric redshifts, stellar mass estimates, and rest-frame colors from the 3D-HST survey are combined with structural parameter measurements from CANDELS imaging to determine the galaxy size-mass distribution over the…
We have identified six early-type galaxies at z>2.8 in the central 5.76 arcmin^2 Hubble Ultra Deep Field NICMOS region based on a pronounced broad-band discontinuity between the NICMOS F110W and F160W bandpasses. These galaxies have red…
Galaxies in the early universe appear to have grown too big too fast, assembling into massive, monolithic objects more rapidly than anticipated in the hierarchical $\Lambda$CDM structure formation paradigm. The available photometric data…
We present individual star-formation histories of $\sim3000$ massive galaxies (log($\mathrm{M_*/M_{\odot}}$) > 10.5) from the Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census (LEGA-C) spectroscopic survey at a lookback time of $\sim$7 billion years…
The stellar mass-star formation rate ($\mathrm{M_*}$-$\mathrm{SFR}$) plane is a fundamental diagnostic for distinguishing galaxy populations. However, the evolutionary pathways of galaxies within this plane across cosmic time remain poorly…
JWST has measured an unprecedented abundance of galaxies above $z\gtrsim 4-5$, whose formation and evolution are still difficult to reconcile within traditional galaxy evolution models in a $\Lambda$CDM framework. Here, we present a study…
We study the connection between the observed star formation rate-stellar mass (SFR-$M_*$) relation and the evolution of the stellar mass function (SMF) by means of a subhalo abundance matching technique coupled to merger trees extracted…
We investigate the environments of massive quiescent galaxies at 3 < z < 5 using the GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) theoretical model. We select galaxies with stellar mass ~10^10.8 Msun and specific star formation rate below 0.3x…
Most dynamical models of galaxies to date assume axisymmetry, which is not representative of a significant fraction of massive galaxies. We have built triaxial orbit-superposition Schwarzschild models of galaxies observed by the SAMI Galaxy…
With the aim of quantifying the contribution of the environment on the evolution of galaxies at z=0 we have used the DR7 catalogue of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to reconstruct the 3-D distribution of 4132 galaxies in 420 square…
In the local Universe, galaxy properties show a strong dependence on environment. In cluster cores, early type galaxies dominate, whereas star-forming galaxies are more and more common in the outskirts. At higher redshifts and in somewhat…
We examine stellar population gradients in ~100 massive early type galaxies spanning 180 < sigma* < 370 km/s and M_K of -22.5 to -26.5 mag, observed as part of the MASSIVE survey (Ma et al. 2014). Using integral-field spectroscopy from the…
Massive galaxies are key probes to understand how the baryonic matter evolves within the dark matter halos. We use the "archaeological" approach to infer the stellar population properties and star formation histories of the most massive (M…
We study galaxy evolution from z=1 to z=0 as a function of velocity dispersion sigma for galaxies with sigma > 95 km/s based on the measured and Monte Carlo realised local velocity dispersion functions (VDFs) of galaxies and the revised…
Using observations from the FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (ZFOURGE), we obtain the deepest measurements to date of the galaxy stellar mass function at 0.5 < z < 2.5. ZFOURGE provides well-constrained photometric redshifts made possible…
Quenched galaxies at z>2 are nearly all very compact relative to z~0, suggesting a physical connection between high stellar density and efficient, rapid cessation of star-formation. We present restframe UV spectra of Lyman-break galaxies…