ORIGIN: metal creation and evolution from the cosmic dawn

ORIGIN is a proposal for the M3 mission call of ESA aimed at the study of metal creation from the epoch of cosmic dawn. Using high-spectral resolution in the soft X-ray band, ORIGIN will be able to identify the physical conditions of all abundant elements between C and Ni to red-shifts of z = 10, and beyond. The mission will answer questions such as: When were the first metals created? How does the cosmic metal content evolve? Where do most of the metals reside in the Universe? What is the role of metals in structure formation and evolution? To reach out to the early Universe ORIGIN will use Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) to study their local environments in their host galaxies. This requires the capability to slew the satellite in less than a minute to the GRB location. By studying the chemical composition and properties of clusters of galaxies we can extend the range of exploration to lower redshifts (z similar to 0.2). For this task we need a high-resolution spectral imaging instrument with a large field of view. Using the same instrument, we can also study the so far only partially detected baryons in the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM). The less dense part of the WHIM will be studied using absorption lines at low redshift in the spectra for GRBs. The ORIGIN mission includes a Transient Event Detector (coded mask with a sensitivity of 0.4 photon/cm(2)/s in 10 s in the 5-150 keV band) to identify and localize 2000 GRBs over a five year mission, of which similar to 65 GRBs have a redshift > 7. The Cryogenic Imaging Spectrometer, with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV, a field of view of 30 arcmin and large effective area below 1 keV has the sensitivity to study clusters up to a significant fraction of the virial radius and to map the denser parts of the WHIM (factor 30 higher than achievable with current instruments). The payload is complemented by a Burst InfraRed Telescope to enable onboard red-shift determination of GRBs (hence securing proper follow up of high-z bursts) and also probes the mildly ionized state of the gas. Fast repointing is achieved by a dedicated Controlled Momentum Gyro and a low background is achieved by the selected low Earth orbit.

Large scale structures around medium mass galaxy clusters at intermediate redshift

François Henri Ambroise Rérat

Theory predicts that galaxies are not randomly distributed in the Universe. They form a complex network of filamentary structures, the Cosmic Web, divided in clusters, groups, filaments and walls. This picture has been confirmed by the large galaxy redshift surveys. Galaxy properties like morphology and star formation rates are strongly influenced by their environment. The most radical transformations are observed in galaxy clusters, located at the intersection of filaments. Nevertheless, the location where the environment starts to play a role and the main physical phenomenon responsible for these changes are still unknown. The aim of this thesis is to determine where and how galaxies are affected by the environment, at local and global scales. We gathered high quality photometry in the 5 optical bands

u

g

r

i

and

z

with MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope for 3 medium mass galaxy clusters at intermediate redshift, with a spatial extent on the sky plane reaching 8 to 13 times the cluster virial radii. These clusters were selected to represent as much as possible progenitors of clusters in the local Universe. The core of these clusters have rich ancillary data from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey. The redshift and mass ranges of these clusters, combined to the wide field of the observations make this study unique. We computed photometric redshifts to map the galaxy distribution around the clusters. We were able to identify overdense regions forming groups and filaments, unveiling for the first time the large scale structures in such details for this type of clusters. We studied the fraction of galaxies in the red sequence in different environments, namely in the field, filaments and groups. We find that significant quenching processes are already at work in filaments, even at large cluster-centric distances. We also show that the local neighborhood of galaxies has a stronger impact on galaxy colors than the global environment. An optical spectroscopic follow-up with the VIsible MultiObject Spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope confirms our photometric results. In particular, the fraction of galaxies with detected \otwo emission line is smaller with increasing density. We also find that the star formation rate, determined from [OII], is in average weaker in groups and clusters than in lower density environments. This thesis opens new perspectives to study the way galaxies populate the Cosmic Web. Combined to weak-lensing analysis and cosmological simulations, it will allow a deeper understanding of the structure formation and their baryonic content. It is a first step before extending the results to much larger samples, with the help of the upcoming all-sky cosmological surveys such as Euclid or the Square Kilometer Array.

EPFL2015

Evolution of the early-type galaxy fraction in clusters since z=0.8

Pascale Jablonka, Anja Von der Linden

We study the morphological content of a large sample of high-redshift clusters to determine its dependence on cluster mass and redshift. Quantitative morphologies are based on PSF-convolved, 2D bulge+disk decompositions of cluster and field galaxies on deep Very Large Telescope FORS2 images of eighteen, optically-selected galaxy clusters at 0.45 < z < 0.80 observed as part of the ESO Distant Cluster Survey ("EDisCS"). Morphological content is characterized by the early-type galaxy fraction f(et), and early-type galaxies are objectively selected based on their bulge fraction and image smoothness. This quantitative selection is equivalent to selecting galaxies visually classified as E or S0. Changes in early-type fractions as a function of cluster velocity dispersion, redshift and star-formation activity are studied. A set of 158 clusters extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is analyzed exactly as the distant EDisCS sample to provide a robust local comparison. We also compare our results to a set of clusters from the Millennium Simulation. Our main results are: (1) the early-type fractions of the SDSS and EDisCS clusters exhibit no clear trend as a function of cluster velocity dispersion. (2) Mid-z EDisCS clusters around sigma = 500 km s(-1) have f(et) similar or equal to 0.5 whereas high-z EDisCS clusters have f(et) similar or equal to 0.4. This represents a similar to 25% increase over a time interval of 2 Gyr. (3) There is a marked difference in the morphological content of EDisCS and SDSS clusters. None of the EDisCS clusters have early-type galaxy fractions greater than 0.6 whereas half of the SDSS clusters lie above this value. This difference is seen in clusters of all velocity dispersions. (4) There is a strong and clear correlation between morphology and star formation activity in SDSS and EDisCS clusters in the sense that decreasing fractions of [OII] emitters are tracked by increasing early-type fractions. This correlation holds independent of cluster velocity dispersion and redshift even though the fraction of [OII] emitters decreases from z similar to 0.8 to z similar to 0.06 in all environments. Our results pose an interesting challenge to structural transformation and star formation quenching processes that strongly depend on the global cluster environment (e. g., a dense ICM) and suggest that cluster membership may be of lesser importance than other variables in determining galaxy properties.

2009