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Probing the evolution of galaxies since z ~ 1 with the Tully-Fisher relation

In this thesis we use the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR), the correlation between a galaxy's luminosity and its rotation velocity, to probe the luminous and dark matter in galaxies over the last &asymp; 8 Gyr. First, we use samples of galaxies spatially resolved in H&alpha; emission with integral field unit observations from the K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS) at z &asymp; 1 and the Sydney-Australian-Astronomical-Observatory Multi- object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey at z &asymp; 0. We match the data quality, analysis methods and sample selection between the two surveys to conduct a direct comparison of the absolute K-band magnitude (MK) and stellar mass (M<sub>*</sub>) TFRs at z &asymp; 1 and z &asymp; 0, free of any difference in biases between them. We measure no evolution of the MK TFR zero-point for star- forming disk-like galaxies since z &asymp; 1, but an increase by 0.2 ± 0.2 dex of the M<sub>*</sub> TFR zero-point for the same galaxies over the same period. This implies the total mass-to-stellar mass ratio of those galaxies has decreased by a factor of &asymp; 0.4 since z &asymp; 1 at fixed rotation velocity, whilst their K-band stellar mass-to- light ratio has increased by a factor of &asymp; 1.6. Moderate rates of star formation in galaxies and continued gas accretion since z &asymp; 1 can explain these changes. Second, we take a step toward an independent measure of the TFR evolution over the same period using carbon monoxide (CO) emission from galaxies as an alternative kinematic tracer. We present the M<sub>*</sub> and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer absolute Band 1 magnitude (MW1) TFRs for galaxies from the CO Legacy Database for the Galex Arecibo SDSS Survey (COLD GASS) as z &asymp; 0 benchmarks that are pre-requisites to extend the CO TFR to z &gsim; 1. We find no significant offsets between the COLD GASS TFR zero-points and those of similar z &asymp; 0 studies. The slope of the M<sub>*</sub> COLD GASS TFR agrees with those of similar z &asymp; 0 studies, but the MW1 TFR slope is slightly shallower than previous studies at a similar redshift. We attribute this to the fact that the COLD GASS sample comprises galaxies of various (late-type) morphologies. Nevertheless, our work provides a robust reference point with which to compare future CO TFR studies.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:730411
Date January 2016
CreatorsTiley, Alfred
ContributorsBureau, Martin
PublisherUniversity of Oxford
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttps://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1169c5e2-5962-47a4-8c9f-f58fcf93bf68

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