In this thesis we investigate the evolution of galaxies since z = 3. There are several methods to measure the star formation rate (SFR) of galaxies, they all however have drawbacks. Several studies have investigated the SFR at high redshifts using SFR trac­ers that suffer from uncertainties, either from the tracer used, or from the uncertainties correcting for the effects of dust. We have new measurements of the Ha emission line for a sample of galaxies at =~1; Ha is a more accurate SFR-tracer than other com­monly used tracers, but until now had been technically difficult to measure at : > 0.85. We investigate methods to correct these observations for dust and we use these mea­surements to investigate the relation between SFR, stellar mass and colour. We find that there is a drop in the fraction of massive (M, > 1011 M.) star-forming galaxies at = < 0.9 and that the fraction of all galaxies that are star-forming drops steadily and significantly with redder (U — B) colours. We find that the M„-SFR (galaxy main sequence, GMS) is flatter than previously measured and that for the most massive galaxies, star formation shuts off abruptly at =~1.

The cycle of star formation is the key to galaxy evolution. Stars form in massive collections of extremely dense cold gas. Stellar feedback will inject turbulence into the interstellar medium (ISM) and regulate the availability of more star-forming gas. This gas is an integral component in the cycle of star formation but is very difficult to model in numerical simulations. We have investigated the interplay between star formation and the structure of the ISM in numerical simulations. These simulations were done using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code Gasoline. For this work we introduce a new treatment for photoelectric heating in Gasoline. We first explore the impact of numerical parameter choices for the star formation threshold density, star formation efficiency and feedback efficiency. Of these three parameters, only the feedback efficiency plays a large role in determining the global star formation rate of the galaxy. Further, we explore the truncation of star formation in the outer regions of galactic discs and its relation to the presence of a two-phase thermal instability. In the outer regions of the simulated discs, gas exists almost exclusively in one warm phase, unsuitable to host large-scale star formation. We find that the disappearance of two-phase structure in the ISM corresponds to the truncation of star formation. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

A Simultaneous Photometer for Infrared and Visual light (hereafter SPIV) has been constructed. SPIV uses three dichroic filters to divide light from a common aperture in the telescope focal plane into four colors with bandpasses (in microns) of: 0.42 to 0.7 (V(B)); 0.7 to 0.95 (I(B)); 1.45 to 1.8 (H); 1.97 to 2.27 (K). The H and K bands are detected by liquid helium cooled InSb diodes. I(B) is detected by a helium cooled Si diode, and V(B) by an uncooled EMI 9658R photomultiplier tube. The instrument response function (IRF) including the effect of atmospheric transmission is shown. The maximum usable aperture size of 2 mm corresponds to 7 arcseconds on the Multiple Mirror Telescope and to 20 arcseconds on the UAO 61" and 90" telescopes. Information about the sky brightness is combined with the IRF to calculate the expected background noise. These calculations show SPIV should be background noise limited in all bands. Observations show this is true except for I(B), which is detector noise limited. The optical alignment of the four channels is shown to be satisfactory. The SPIV instrumental magnitude system is defined. Observations of 40 radio galaxies and 39 non-radio first ranked cluster galaxies with known redshifts ranging from 0.019 to 1.6 are reduced on this system, correcting for atmospheric extinction, reddening, and aperture. The transformation to standard magnitude systems is derived. The reduced V(B)-H, I(B)-H and H-K colors as a function of redshift are compared for the radio and non-radio galaxies using statistical tests. No convincing differences are found, with the possible exception of H-K in the z = 0.2 to 0.4 range. These colors are also compared to a "no evolution" prediction generated by redshifting a composite spectrum of nearby elliptical galaxies, and to evolutionary models from Bruzual (1981). Passively evolving models with little residual star formation and a galaxy formation epoch z(f) > 3 are slightly favored by H-K observations. These models predict about one magnitude brightening at H by a redshift of one. The I(B)-H color becomes redder with redshift much faster than the reddest model, and shows large scatter for z 3. Residual star formation models require an older universe than is allowed by qₒ = 0.5, Hₒ = 80 km/sec/Mpc to fit the red V(B)-H envelope at high redshift. Some galaxies show strong blueward deviations for z > 0.4. This behavior is most easily explained by episodes of star formation involving small fractions of the total number of stars. Because of the flatness of H-K and I(B)-H at high redshift, and the scatter in V(B)-H, determining redshifts > 0.4 from broadband colors will be difficult.

The majority of typically sized galaxies in the local Universe reside in a common dark matter halo with other similar galaxies known as a galaxy group. However, this was not always the case. Nine billion years ago, when the universe was one third its current age, these galaxies were almost exclusively the only massive galaxy in their dark matter haloes. In this thesis, I use both observational and theoretical methods to attempt to understand the effect these galaxy groups have on the evolution of galaxy properties. I examine the morphological and star formation properties of galaxies in redshift selected samples of galaxy groups at two redshift epochs, z=0 and z=0.4. Galaxy groups contain fewer disk galaxies, as determined by quantitative morphology measures, than similar luminosity field galaxies at both redshift epochs. Furthermore, the difference, at fixed luminosity, grows from 6% at z=0.4 to 19% at z=0. The fraction of passive galaxies, as determined from spectral energy distribution fitting of UV and optical photometry, shows similar behaviour. However, at neither redshift do we find that the disk dominated and star forming galaxies in groups have properties which are significantly different from those in the field. The disks in both environments show similar scaling relations and similar distributions of asymmetry. While both group and field star forming galaxies have similar average star formation rates at fixed stellar mass and redshift. These results argue in favor of a relatively gentle physical mechanism of transformation, like strangulation, which removes the hot halo of a galaxy as it falls into a more massive halo. I use a semi-analytic galaxy formation to understand the accretion histories of galaxies which reside in galaxy groups and clusters at different redshift epochs. The use of a simple model for environmental effects finds that the evolution seen in our observations of passive galaxies can be explained if a galaxy becomes passive 3 Gyrs after falling into a dark matter halo which has a mass of greater than 10E13 Msun. Finally, I use two novel methods for exploring how diffuse stellar mass and dust is distributed in and around galaxy groups. These are important probes of the environmental influence on galaxy evolution. By correlating the positions of hostless type Ia supernovae with galaxy groups, I find that as much as half of a galaxy's stellar mass is in a diffuse form outside of galaxies. These means that processes which shred or harass galaxies must be particularly strong in the group environment. I also find that dust is destroyed by the hot gas contained within groups and clusters. Dust is a necessary component of star formation, and its destruction could be an additional mechanism to suppress the production of stars in galaxy groups.

No description available.

The majority of typically sized galaxies in the local Universe reside in a common dark matter halo with other similar galaxies known as a galaxy group. However, this was not always the case. Nine billion years ago, when the universe was one third its current age, these galaxies were almost exclusively the only massive galaxy in their dark matter haloes. In this thesis, I use both observational and theoretical methods to attempt to understand the effect these galaxy groups have on the evolution of galaxy properties. I examine the morphological and star formation properties of galaxies in redshift selected samples of galaxy groups at two redshift epochs, z=0 and z=0.4. Galaxy groups contain fewer disk galaxies, as determined by quantitative morphology measures, than similar luminosity field galaxies at both redshift epochs. Furthermore, the difference, at fixed luminosity, grows from 6% at z=0.4 to 19% at z=0. The fraction of passive galaxies, as determined from spectral energy distribution fitting of UV and optical photometry, shows similar behaviour. However, at neither redshift do we find that the disk dominated and star forming galaxies in groups have properties which are significantly different from those in the field. The disks in both environments show similar scaling relations and similar distributions of asymmetry. While both group and field star forming galaxies have similar average star formation rates at fixed stellar mass and redshift. These results argue in favor of a relatively gentle physical mechanism of transformation, like strangulation, which removes the hot halo of a galaxy as it falls into a more massive halo. I use a semi-analytic galaxy formation to understand the accretion histories of galaxies which reside in galaxy groups and clusters at different redshift epochs. The use of a simple model for environmental effects finds that the evolution seen in our observations of passive galaxies can be explained if a galaxy becomes passive 3 Gyrs after falling into a dark matter halo which has a mass of greater than 10E13 Msun. Finally, I use two novel methods for exploring how diffuse stellar mass and dust is distributed in and around galaxy groups. These are important probes of the environmental influence on galaxy evolution. By correlating the positions of hostless type Ia supernovae with galaxy groups, I find that as much as half of a galaxy's stellar mass is in a diffuse form outside of galaxies. These means that processes which shred or harass galaxies must be particularly strong in the group environment. I also find that dust is destroyed by the hot gas contained within groups and clusters. Dust is a necessary component of star formation, and its destruction could be an additional mechanism to suppress the production of stars in galaxy groups.

Despite considerable progress in recent years, a complete description of the physical drivers of galaxy formation and evolution remains elusive, in part because of our poor understanding of star formation, and how star formation in galaxies is regulated by feedback from supernovae and massive stellar winds. Insight into the star formation histories of galaxies, and the interplay between star formation and feedback, can be gained by measuring their chemical abundances, which until recently has only been possible for galaxies in the nearby universe. However, reliable star formation and abundance calibrations have been hampered by various systematic uncertainties, and the lack of a suitable spectrophotometric sample with which to develop better calibrations. To address the limitations of existing surveys, we have obtained integrated optical spectra for a diverse sample of more than four hundred nearby star-forming galaxies. Using these data, in conjunction with observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we conduct a detailed analysis of optical star formation indicators, and develop empirical calibrations for the [O II] 3727 and H-beta 4861 nebular emission lines. Next, we investigate whether integrated spectroscopy of star forming galaxies can be used to infer their gas-phase oxygen abundances in the presence of radial abundance gradients, diffuse-ionized gas emission, and dust attenuation. We conclude that the integrated R23 parameter is generally insensitive to these systematic effects, enabling the gas-phase metallicity to be measured with a precision of +/-0.1 dex. We apply these methods to study the evolution in the luminosity-metallicity relation at 0<z<1 based on an analysis of more than 3500 I-band selected galaxies observed as part of the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey, and data culled from the literature. Our principal results are that, at fixed luminosity, the mean gas-phase metallicity of luminous (MB<-19 mag), star-forming galaxies at z=1 is a factor of two lower than the gas-phase metallicity in comparably luminous galaxies at z=0. However, after accounting for the effects of luminosity evolution, we find that the amount of chemical evolution for luminous galaxies corresponds to an increase of only 10%-20% since z1⁺ё, assuming a direct evolutionary connection between nearby and distant star-forming galaxies.

The luminosity function of galaxies, the measurement of the space density as a function of luminosity, is an important test of cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution. Unfortunately, there is a factor of two variation in recent measurements of the luminosity function. Most of this variation is due to systematic errors, caused by various selection effects. With two large new surveys, the Two degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, underway it is important to recognise and eliminate these selection effects if we are going to improve our measurement of the luminosity function and fully utilise these surveys. By measuring the space density of galaxies as a function of surface brightness as well as luminosity, a bivariate brightness distribution, we can comprehend many of the selection effects such as light loss, incompleteness and the visibility of galaxies. Since galaxies have a variety of shapes and sizes, a distribution in luminosity and surface brightness helps to separate out different types of galaxy. Correlations between the luminosity and surface brightness place extra constraints on models of galaxy formation and evolution. When we analyse our results, we find that recent surveys that have not taken into account surface brightness selection effects underestimate the luminosity of the bright end by 5-10%. Using the bivariate brightness distribution, we can constrain the luminosity density to a range that varies by < 20% rather than by a factor of 2. We find that the luminosity function is flat over the range -19.5 < M < -17 and then rises sharply as late-type spiral galaxies begin to dominate. The space density does not vary with surface brightness with the result that low surface brightness galaxies are at least as common as normal galaxies. However, low surface brightness galaxies are also intrinsically faint, following the luminosity-surface brightness correlation for spirals, so they do not contribute significantly to the luminosity density.

We describe a new Large Program in progress on the Gemini North and South telescopes: Gemini Observations of Galaxies in Rich Early Environments (GOGREEN). This is an imaging and deep spectroscopic survey of 21 galaxy systems at 1 < z < 1.5, selected to span a factor > 10 in halo mass. The scientific objectives include measuring the role of environment in the evolution of low-mass galaxies, and measuring the dynamics and stellar contents of their host haloes. The targets are selected from the SpARCS, SPT, COSMOS, and SXDS surveys, to be the evolutionary counterparts of today's clusters and groups. The new red-sensitive Hamamatsu detectors on GMOS, coupled with the nod-and-shuffle sky subtraction, allow simultaneous wavelength coverage over lambda similar to 0.6-1.05 mu m, and this enables a homogeneous and statistically complete redshift survey of galaxies of all types. The spectroscopic sample targets galaxies with AB magnitudes z' < 24.25 and [3.6] mu m < 22.5, and is therefore statistically complete for stellar masses M* greater than or similar to 10(10.3) M-circle dot, for all galaxy types and over the entire redshift range. Deep, multiwavelength imaging has been acquired over larger fields for most systems, spanning u through K, in addition to deep IRAC imaging at 3.6 mu m. The spectroscopy is similar to 50 per cent complete as of semester 17A, and we anticipate a final sample of similar to 500 new cluster members. Combined with existing spectroscopy on the brighter galaxies from GCLASS, SPT, and other sources, GOGREEN will be a large legacy cluster and field galaxy sample at this redshift that spectroscopically covers a wide range in stellar mass, halo mass, and clustercentric radius.

We explore the evolution of the internal gas kinematics of star-forming galaxies from the peak of cosmic star formation at z similar to 2 to today. Measurements of galaxy rotation velocity V-rot, which quantify ordered motions, and gas velocity dispersion sigma(g), which quantify disordered motions, are adopted from the DEEP2 and SIGMA surveys. This sample covers a continuous baseline in redshift over 0.1 < z < 2.5, spanning 10 Gyr. At low redshift, nearly all sufficiently massive star-forming galaxies are rotationally supported (V-rot > sigma(g)). By z = 2, 50% and 70% of galaxies are rotationally supported at low (10(9)-10(10) M-circle dot) and high (10(10)-10(11) M-circle dot) stellar mass, respectively. For V-rot > 3 sigma(g), the percentage drops below 35% for all masses. From z = 2 to now, galaxies exhibit remarkably smooth kinematic evolution on average. All galaxies tend toward rotational support with time, and higher-mass systems reach it earlier. This is largely due to a mass-independent decline in sigma(g) by a factor of 3 since z - 2. Over the same time period, V-rot increases by a factor of 1.5 in low-mass systems but does not evolve at high mass. These trends in V-rot and sigma(g) are at a fixed stellar mass and therefore should not be interpreted as evolutionary tracks for galaxy populations. When populations are linked in time via abundance matching, sigma(g) declines as before and V-rot strongly increases with time for all galaxy populations, enhancing the evolution in V-rot sigma(g). These results indicate that z = 2 is a period of disk assembly, during which strong rotational support is only just beginning to emerge.