Browsing by Subject "high-redshift galaxies"

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    Studying the Building Blocks of the Universe: the faint, low-mass galaxies
    (2018-08) Mehta, Vihang
    Faint, low-mass galaxies are the next frontier in extending our understanding of how our universe evolved into its present-day state that we observe. As the ever-advancing technological prowess brings about the next generation of cutting-edge observational facilities, the limit down to which we can observe galaxies is constantly pushed to fainter fluxes and consequently, lower masses. With this new population of galaxies coming into focus, it also serves as a new set of subjects to test our models and theory of galaxy formation. While the current galaxy formation models have been widely successful at reproducing the general trends in observed properties of typical galaxies, they struggle to do so for galaxies in low mass halos. In simulations, the growth of the galaxies traces the growth of their parent dark matter halos too closely, which manifests as an over-prediction of low-mass galaxies compared to the observations. Feedback from star-formation and central black hole activity is necessary to decouple the evolution of the galaxies (made of baryonic material) from that of the dark matter halos. This is particularly critical for low-mass galaxies because of their shallow gravitational potential wells. The goal of this thesis is to understand the star-formation properties of faint, low-mass galaxies and to assemble statistically significant samples of these objects that can ultimately be used to perform more detailed follow-up studies and refine the galaxy formation models. Using deep UV imaging data obtained as part of the Hubble UltraViolet Ultra Deep Field (UVUDF) program, we measure the rest-UV luminosity functions for star-forming galaxies during the cosmic high-noon -- the peak of cosmic star-formation rate at 1.5