Looking Wider and Further: The Evolution of Galaxies Inside Galaxy Clusters
- Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
Galaxy clusters are rare objects in the universe, but on-going wide field optical surveys are identifying many thousands of them to redshift 1.0 and beyond. Using early data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and publicly released data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), this dissertation explores the evolution of cluster galaxies in the redshift range from 0 to 1.0. As it is common for deep wide field sky surveys like DES to struggle with galaxy detection efficiency at cluster core, the first component of this dissertation describes an efficient package that helps resolving the issue. The second part focuses on the formation of cluster galaxies. The study quantifies the growth of cluster bright central galaxies (BCGs), and argues for the importance of merging and intra-cluster light production during BCG evolution. An analysis of cluster red sequence galaxy luminosity function is also performed, demonstrating that the abundance of these galaxies is mildly dependent on cluster mass and redshift. The last component of the dissertation characterizes the properties of galaxy filaments to help understanding cluster environments
- Research Organization:
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11359
- OSTI ID:
- 1248222
- Report Number(s):
- FERMILAB-THESIS-2016-01; 1419194
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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