Two complementary approaches of galaxy formation and evolution studies with GALEV
Ralf Kotulla (U. Hertfordshire)
Studies of galaxy formation and evolution are one of the ever hot topics in extragalactic astrophysics. I will present the latest version of our GALEV evolutionary synthesis models that are a unique tool to study the photometric evolution of stellar population from the onset of star formation in the early universe until today. Those studies can roughly be separated into two approaches: The "astro-archaeology" approach uses old and intermediate-age globular clusters as witnesses of galaxy formation and transformation to reconstruct the violent formation history of their host galaxy. The second, "observational cosmology" approach reconstructs the formation history from observations of galaxies in the early universe at high redshifts. I will present our new photometric redshift code GAZELLE, that allows us to derive not only the best-matching redshift, but also stellar- and gas mass as well as a star formation rate for each galaxy, all including their respective uncertainties. Applying those two methods to both individual galaxies and large galaxy samples from surveys such as GOODS and COSMOS will allow us to study galaxy evolution of 90% of the Hubble time in unprecedented detail.
Contact: Barry Madore