2021 Project Description

Growing in dual II - the spatial connections between dusty and radio galaxies at high redshifts

Supervisors

Chian-Chou Chen (TC), Zhen-Kai Gao
Find out more about supervisors on ASIAA website

Task Description and Goals

To form the most massive galaxies seen in the local universe, the current studies suggest that their projenitors must have gone through two important phases; One that allows formation of a significant amount of stellar masses within a very short period of time, and the other, presumably occurred after the first phase, is one that having their black holes outshining their host galaxies. The connection between the first star-bursting phase and the second quasar phase is at the moment not well understood, partly due to the difficulty of finding them together at the same place and time.
To address this, we have been undertaking a legacy submillimeter survey using the SCUBA-2 instrument around a large sample of high redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) that are powerful radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) at z > 1. The primary goal is to uncover dusty star-bursting galaxies around HzRGs, which can be achieve statistically by comparing the number counts measured around HzRGs and reference fields in which there is no obvious massive structure. The student will work with our team and lead the number counts analyses using the SCUBA-2 data on the first few HzRGs, which will be compared with the results from other fields to answer whether dusty star-bursting galaxies ubiquitously co-exist with quasars and AGN at high redshifts, testing the current hypothesis of co-evolution between these two massive galaxy populations.

Required Background

• Basic knowledge of physics and mathematics.
• Additional knowledge of astrophysics in particular on galaxies would be an asset.
• Basic knowldge and skills of computer programing would be desirable.