Details on the event

01/09/2018

Astrophysics Talk

The baryon cycle in galaxies: New results and open questions

Roberto Decarli (INAF OAS)

Tuesday 26/11/2019 @ 14:00, Sala IV piano Battiferro

Galaxy evolution is the result of a complex interplay of gas accretion from the cosmic web, cooling of ionized gas into neutral and molecular form, star formation, nuclear activity, metal enrichment, and feedback on multiple scales. The ASPECS survey provides, for the first time, an overview of the molecular gas content in galaxies that are purely gas-selected. By targeting the archetypal extragalactic field, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, we can immediately put the molecular gas observations into a variety of galaxy properties (morphology, stellar mass, star formation rates, nuclear activity, etc). Most critically, the ASPECS observations provide a direct constrain on the availability of molecular gas, i.e., the fuel for star formation. This key ingredient, together with the evolution of the neutral gas content, and the build-up of stellar mass, allows us to compile the budget of galaxies through cosmic time. In this talk, we will discuss the lesson learned and the lingering open questions.