Fakultät für Physik und Astronomie
STEPHEN PHILLIPS hostreviews.co.uk / UNSPLASH

In-situ IMF at z~2

Themiya Nanayakkara , Swinburne University

The development of sensitive Near Infra-Red instruments has made it possible to study galaxy properties at z~2, just 3Gyr after the Big Bang. This is expected to be the time period where galaxies are actively star forming and evolving rapidly to form the massive galaxies that are observed in our local neighbourhood. ZFIRE is a survey, which utilises the MOSFIRE instrument on Keck telescope over 18 nights to study properties of ZFOURGE selected mass complete galaxies in rich environments at z~2. In my talk I will present results of the first ever attempt to constrain the Initial Mass Function (IMF) of galaxies at these redshifts using a cluster and a field sample. We have investigated the degeneracy between the star formation histories and the IMF to make strong constrains on the stellar mass distribution of these galaxies using synthetic stellar spectra. I will focus on the role of dust, star-bursts, stellar rotation, binaries, and metallicity on determining observed galaxy properties at z~2 to address whether ZFIRE results favour the canonical concept of a universal IMF.

ARI Institute Colloquium
12 Dec 2016, 11:15
ARI Moenchhofstrasse 12-14, ARI Seminar Room 1

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