LAM seminaire: Thiago Signorini Gonçalves

Star formation histories from spectroscopic studies of galaxies throughout cosmic time

Galaxies show a clear dichotomy in their properties, with blue spirals being markedly different from red ellipticals. This means galaxies must undergo some physical transformation that prevent them from further forming new stars. In this talk I will discuss a series of results that aim to measure and understand star formation histories, in particular measuring how fast quenching must occur. In particular, our group has previously shown that galaxies quench faster in the early universe, with possible connections with merging activity and more prevalent AGN feedback at high redshifts. More recently, we have investigated the possible correlation between quenching timescales and other processes, in an attempt to further understand the main drivers of galaxy evolution and transformation between the two populations. Our group has shown that quenching timescales strongly depends on AGN activity and galaxy environment, as would be expected from galaxy evolution models. We have also shown that ellipticals quench faster than spiral galaxies with similar colors, presenting strong evidence that morphological transformations are tightly correlated with distinct star formation histories.  In the end I will show how these studies will be impacted by the MOSAIC spectrograph at the ELT; the increase in sensitivity will allow us to target considerably less massive and more massive galaxies than ever before, covering the parameter space in the formation of galaxies throughout cosmic time in a more complete manner when compared to current surveys. I will briefly discuss a series of results that aim to measure and understand star formation quenching, and show how these studies will be impacted by the advent of MOSAIC, allowing for the same diagnostics to be extended to dwarf galaxies at cosmic noon.