How do dense environments drive galaxy evolution? (astronomy and astrophysics)

Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is one of the largest challenges in contemporary astrophysics. This is because the physical processes involved act on scales that span many orders of magnitude in both time and space. Dense environments, such as galaxy clusters, provide a laboratory to study many of these processes, and obtain crucial clues as to the primary external influences on galaxy evolution.

The student who takes on this project will have the opportunity to work as part of an international team of astronomers on the ALMA and Herschel Fornax Cluster Surveys (both of which are lead from Cardiff). The selected student will lead projects to to study the evolution of gas and dust in galaxies, using an array of state of the art observational data, taken by telescopes both in space and on the ground. By comparing Fornax with other galaxy clusters they will be able to to address the importance of processes such as black-hole accretion, mergers, ram pressure stripping, harassment and strangulation, and provide a crucial piece in the puzzle which can help us understand galaxy evolution as a whole.