Within standard $Λ$CDM cosmology, Population III (Pop III) star formation in minihalos of mass $M_\mathrm{halo}\gtrsim 5\times10^5$ M$_\odot$ provides the first stellar sources of Lyman$α$ (Ly$α$) photons. The Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) has measured a strong absorption signal of the redshifted 21 cm radiation from neutral hydrogen at $z\approx 17$, requiring efficient formation of massive stars before then. In this paper, we investigate whether star formation in minihalos plays a significant role in establishing the early Ly$α$ background required to produce the EDGES absorption feature. We find that Pop III stars are important in providing the necessary Ly$α$-flux at high redshifts, and derive a best-fitting average Pop III stellar mass of $\sim$ 750M$_\odot{}$ per minihalo, corresponding to a star formation efficiency of 0.1%. Further, it is important to include baryon-dark matter streaming velocities in the calculation, to limit the efficiency of Pop~III star formation in minihalos. Without this effect, the cosmic dawn coupling between 21 cm spin temperature and that of the gas would occur at redshifts higher than what is implied by EDGES.
We measure the harmonic-space auto-power spectrum of the galaxy overdensity in the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) First Data Release and its cross correlation with the map of the lensing convergence of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the Planck collaboration. We report a $\sim5σ$ detection of the cross-correlation. We show that the combination of the clustering power spectrum and CMB lensing cross-correlation allows us to place constraints on the high-redshift tail of the redshift distribution, one of the largest sources of uncertainty in the use of continuum surveys for cosmolo…
Galaxy redshift surveys are designed to map cosmic structures in three dimensions for large-scale structure studies. Nevertheless, limitations due to sampling and the survey window are unavoidable and degrade the cosmological constraints. We present an analysis of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) over the redshift range $0.6 < z < 1$ that is optimised to extract the cosmological parameters while fully accounting for the complex survey geometry. We employ the Gibbs sampling algorithm to iteratively draw samples of the galaxy density field in redshift space, the galaxy bia…
Future Square Kilometre Array (SKA) surveys are expected to generate huge datasets of 21cm maps on cosmological scales from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). We assess the viability of exploiting machine learning techniques, namely, convolutional neural networks (CNN), to simultaneously estimate the astrophysical and cosmological parameters from 21cm maps from semi-numerical simulations. We further convert the simulated 21cm maps into SKA-like mock maps using the detailed SKA antennae distribution, thermal noise and a recipe for foreground cleaning. We successfully design two CNN architectures …
Currently there are two competing scenarios to explain the origin of the stellar population in globular clusters (GCs). The main difference between them is whether or not multiple events of star formation took place within GCs. In this paper we present the star formation history (SFH) of Cluster 1, a massive young cluster in NGC 34 $(\sim10^7\mbox{ M}_\odot)$. We use DynBaS, a spectrum fitting algorithm, to retrieve the SFH and find that Cluster 1 is consistent with a single stellar population of solar metallicity with an age of $100\pm30$ Myr and a mass of $1.9\pm0.4\times10^7\mbox{ M}_\odot$…
We explore the use of the cosmic infrared background as a tracer of the LSS for cross-correlating with the CMB and exploit the ISW. We use the improved linear CIB model of Maniyar et al (2018) and derive the theoretical CIBxISW cross-correlation for Planck HFI frequencies 217, 353, 545 and 857 GHz and IRAS 3000 GHz. We predict a positive cross-correlation between the CIB and CMB whose amplitude decreases rapidly at small scales. We perform a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis on this cross-correlation. In the ideal case of the cross-correlation obtained over 70% (40%) of the sky with no resi…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionise our understanding of early galaxy formation, and could potentially set stringent constraints on the nature of dark matter. We use a semi-empirical model of galaxy formation to investigate the extent to which uncertainties in the implementation of baryonic physics may be degenerate with the predictions of two different models of dark matter -- Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and a 7 keV sterile neutrino, which behaves as Warm Dark Matter (WDM). Our models are calibrated to the observed UV luminosity function at $z=4$ using two separate dust attenu…
The formation of the first stars in the high-redshift Universe is a sensitive probe of the small-scale, particle physics nature of dark matter (DM). We carry out cosmological simulations of primordial star formation in ultra-light, axion-like particle DM cosmology, with masses of $10^{-22}$ and $10^{-21}\,{\rm eV}$, with de Broglie wavelengths approaching galactic scales ($\sim$kpc). The onset of star formation is delayed, and shifted to more massive host structures. For the lightest DM particle mass explored here, first stars form at $z \sim 7$ in structures with $\sim 10^9\,{\rm M}_\odot$, c…
We present observations and dynamical models of the stellar nuclear clusters (NCs) at the centres of NGC 4244 and M33. We then compare these to an extensive set of simulations testing the importance of purely stellar dynamical mergers on the formation and growth of NCs. Mergers of star clusters are able to produce a wide variety of observed properties, including densities, structural scaling relations, shapes (including the presence of young discs) and even rapid rotation. Nonetheless, difficulties remain, most notably that the second order kinematic moment V_rms = (V^2 + sigma^2)^(1/2) of the…
We used broad-band imaging data for 10 cool-core brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and conducted a Bayesian analysis using stellar population synthesis to determine the likely properties of the constituent stellar populations. Determination of ongoing star formation rates (SFRs), in particular, has a direct impact on our understanding of the cooling of the intracluster medium (ICM), star formation and AGN-regulated feedback. Our model consists of an old stellar population and a series of young stellar components. We calculated marginalized posterior probability distributions for various model …
CASCO: Cosmological and AStrophysical parameters from Cosmological simulations and Observations -- II. Constraining cosmology and astrophysical processes with early- and late-type galaxies
Some formation scenarios that have been put forward to explain multiple populations within Globular Clusters (GCs) require that the young massive cluster have large reservoirs of cold gas within them, which is necessary to form future generations of stars. In this paper we use deep observations taken with Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) to assess the amount of molecular gas within 3 young (50-200 Myr) massive (~10^6 Msun) clusters in the Antennae galaxies. No significant CO(3--2) emission was found associated with any of the three clusters. We place upper limits for the mo…
This paper investigates the star formation rate (SFR) in the Solar neighbourhood. First, we build the local age distribution function (ADF) with an updated sample of 442 star clusters located at less than 1\,kpc from the Sun. Next, we define the SFR, compute the individual mass evolution of a population of artificial clusters covering the broad range of parameters observed in actual clusters, and assume 100\,\ms\ as the low-mass limit for effective cluster observation. This leads to a simulated ADF, which is compared to the low-noise Solar neighbourhood ADF. The best match corresponds to a non…
We discuss and test possible evolutionary connections between Blue Compact Dwarf galaxies (BCDs) and other types of dwarf galaxies. BCDs provide ideal laboratories to study intense star formation episodes in low mass dwarf galaxies, and have sometimes been considered a short-lived evolutionary stage between types of dwarf galaxies. To test these connections, we consider a sample of BCDs as well as a comparison sample of nearby galaxies from the Local Volume Legacy (LVL) survey for context. We fit the multi-wavelength spectral energy distributions (SED, far-ultra-violet to far-infrared) of each…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing ground- and space-based data from the far-UV to the millimeter, astronomners can assess the amount, composition, and location of circumstellar gas and dust as a function of time. We review primarily results from the Spitzer Space Telescope, with reference to other ground- and space-based observations. Comparing these results with those from exoplanet search te…
In this work we study the cosmological simulations as a tool to understand the formation of large-scale structure of the universe, for this, we show the equivalence of Newtonian cosmology with Poisson gauge and we study the solution of the Einstein's field equations for this gauge. The simulations are essential for taking account the results of the cosmological model, allowing to compare the results with observational data. The N-bodies simulations have been used from systems of few bodies to the evolution and formation of nonlinear large scale structure as filaments and galactic halos.
We present the delay time distribution (DTD) estimates of Type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) using spatially resolved SN~Ia host galaxy spectra from MUSE and MaNGA. By employing a grouping algorithm based on k-means and earth mover's distances (EMD), we separated the host galaxy star formation histories (SFHs) into spatially distinct regions and used maximum likelihood method to constrain the DTD of SNe Ia progenitors. When a power-law model of the form $DTD(t)\propto t^{s} (t>τ)$ is used, we found an SN rate decay slope $s=-1.41^{+0.32}_{-0.33}$ and a delay time $τ=120^{+142}_{-83} Myr$ . Moreover, …
The correlation between galaxies' integrated stellar masses and star formation rates (the `star formation main sequence'; SFMS) is a well-established scaling relation. Recently, surveys have found a relationship between the star formation rate and stellar mass surface densities on kpc and sub-kpc scales (the `resolved SFMS'; rSFMS). In this work, we demonstrate that the rSFMS emerges naturally in FIRE-2 zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies. We make SFR and stellar mass maps of the simulated galaxies at a variety of spatial resolutions and star formation averaging time-scales and fit …
Core-collapse supernovae (SNe) are believed to be the first significant source of dust in the Universe. Such SNe are expected to be the main dust producers in young high-redshift Lyman $α$ emitters (LAEs) given their young ages, providing an excellent testbed of SN dust formation models during the early stages of galaxy evolution. We focus on the dust enrichment of a specific, luminous LAE (Himiko, $z\simeq 6.6$) for which a stringent upper limit of $52.1~μ$Jy ($3σ$) has recently been obtained from ALMA continuum observations at 1.2 mm. We predict its submillimetre dust emission using detailed…
There is currently a severe discrepancy between theoretical models of dust formation in core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), which predict $\gtrsim 0.01$ M$_\odot$ of ejecta dust forming within $\sim 1000$ days, and observations at these epochs, which infer much lower masses. We demonstrate that, in the optically thin case, these low dust masses are robust despite significant observational and model uncertainties. For a sample of 11 well-observed CCSNe, no plausible model reaches carbon dust masses above $10^{-4}$ M$_\odot$, or silicate masses above $\sim 10^{-3}$ M$_\odot$. Optically thick model…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole (BBH) mergers provide a new probe of massive-star evolution and the formation channels of binary compact objects. By coupling the growing sample of BBH systems with population synthesis models, we can begin to constrain the parameters of such models and glean unprecedented knowledge about the inherent physical processes that underpin binary stellar evolution. In this study, we apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to mass measurements from a synthetic GW sample to constrain the physical prescriptions in population models and the relative fraction …
