Rest-frame optical properties of high-z galaxies and the recent discovery of evolved galaxies at z>2."
by Ivo Labbe (visitor/U. Leiden)
Abstract
Until recently, we thought that optical surveys and photometric techniques
which select UV-bright star-forming galaxies gave a fair census of the
high-redshift universe. But in the past year, deep surveys in the
near-infrared are uncovering new populations of galaxies, showing that we
are probably missing up to half of the stellar mass at z ~ 3, and also
misinterpreted the morphologies of the galaxies. I will present part of my
current PhD thesis work aimed at understanding the nature of the
substantial population of evolved galaxies at z > 2 that was discovered
in the Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey (FIRES). The failure to
produce sufficient numbers of such galaxies is a
common feature of current hierarchical scenarios of galaxy formation.
Detailed study of their spectral properties and morphology with the
largest ground and space-based telescopes is essential for an improved
picture of galaxy formation.
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