The Evolution of the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation over the past 6 Gyr

Scaling relations are salient ingredients of galaxy evolution and formation models. I summarize results from the IMAGES survey, which combines spatially-resolved kinematics from FLAMES/GIRAFFE with imaging from HST/ACS and other facilities. Specifically, I will focus on the evolution of the stellar mass and baryonic Tully-Fisher Relations (TFR) from z=0.6 down to z=0. We found a significant evolution in zero point and scatter of the stellar mass TFR compared to the local Universe. Combined with gas fractions derived by inverting the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation, we derived for the first time a baryonic TFR at high redshift. Conversely to the stellar mass TFR, the baryonic relation does not appear to evolve in zero point, which suggests that most of the reservoir of gas converted into stars over the past 6 Gyr was already gravitationally bound to galaxies at z=0.6.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the IAU Symposium 277 "Tracing the Ancestry of Galaxies"; 4 pages, 1 figur

The formation of disks in massive spiral galaxies

The flatness of the rotation curve inside spiral galaxies is interpreted as the imprint of a halo of invisible matter. Using the deepest observations of distant galaxies, we have investigated how large disks could have been formed. Observations include spatially resolved kinematics, detailed morphologies and photometry from UV to mid-IR. Six Giga-years ago, half of the present-day spirals had anomalous kinematics and morphologies that considerably affect the scatter of the Tully Fisher relation. All anomalous galaxies can be modelled through gas-rich, major mergers that lead to a rebuilt of a new disk. The spiral-rebuilding scenario is proposed as a new channel to form large disks in present-day spirals and it accounts for all the observed evolutions since the last 6 Giga-years. A large fraction of the star formation is linked to merging events during their whole durations.Comment: AIP Proceedings of a review given at the "Invisible Universe International Conference" held in Paris, June 2009. 16 pages, 9 Figure

Coupling MOAO with Integral Field Spectroscopy: specifications for the VLT and the E-ELT

[Abridged] We have developed an end-to-end simulation to specify the science requirements of a MOAO-fed integral field spectrograph on either an 8m or 42m telescope. Our simulations re-scales observations of local galaxies or results from numerical simulations of disk or interacting galaxies. For the current analysis, we limit ourselves to a local disk galaxy which exhibits simple rotation and a simulation of a merger. We have attempted to generalize our results by introducing the simple concepts of "PSF contrast" which is the amount of light polluting adjacent spectra which we find drives the smallest EE at a given spatial scale. The choice of the spatial sampling is driven by the "scale-coupling", i.e., the relationship between the IFU pixel scale and the size of the features that need to be recovered by 3D spectroscopy in order to understand the nature of the galaxy and its substructure. Because the dynamical nature of galaxies are mostly reflected in their large-scale motions, a relatively coarse spatial resolution is enough to distinguish between a rotating disk and a major merger. Although we used a limited number of morpho-kinematic cases, our simulations suggest that, on a 42m telescope, the choice of an IFU pixel scale of 50-75 mas seems to be sufficient. Such a coarse sampling has the benefit of lowering the exposure time to reach a specific signal-to-noise as well as relaxing the performance of the MOAO system. On the other hand, recovering the full 2D-kinematics of z~4 galaxies requires high signal-to-noise and at least an EE of 34% in 150 mas (2 pixels of 75 mas). Finally, we carried out a similar study at z=1.6 with a MOAO-fed spectrograph for an 8m, and find that at least an EE of 30% at 0.25 arcsec spatial sampling is required to understand the nature of disks and mergers.Comment: 17 pages, 20 figures, accepted for publication in the MNRA

Projection distortion analysis for flattened image mosaicing from straight uniform generalized cylinders

This paper presents a new approach for reconstructing images mapped or painted on straight uniform generalized cylinders (SUGC). A set of monocular images is taken from different viewpoints in order to be mosaiced and to represent the entire scene in detail. The expressions of the SUGC's projection axis are derived from two cross-sections projected onto the image plane. Based on these axes we derive the SUGC localization in the camera coordinate system. We explain how we can find a virtual image representation when the intersection of the two axes is matched to the image center. We analyze the perspective distortions when flattening a scene which is mapped on a SUGC. We evaluate the lower and the upper bounds of the necessary number of views in order to represent the entire scene from a SUGC, by considering the distortions produced by perspective projection. A region matching based mosaicing method is proposed to be applied on the flattened images in order to obtain the complete scene. The mosaiced scene is visualized on a new synthetic surface by a mapping procedure. The proposed algorithm is used for the representation of mural paintings located on SUGCs with closed cross-sections (circles for columns), or opened cross-sections (ellipses or parabolas for vaults). (C) 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

The Physics and Mass Assembly of distant galaxies with the E-ELT

One of the main science goal of the future European Extremely Large Telescope will be to understand the mass assembly process in galaxies as a function of cosmic time. To this aim, a multi-object, AO-assisted integral field spectrograph will be required to map the physical and chemical properties of very distant galaxies. In this paper, we examine the ability of such an instrument to obtain spatially resolved spectroscopy of a large sample of massive (0.1<Mstellar<5e11Mo) galaxies at 2<z<6, selected from future large area optical-near IR surveys. We produced a set of about one thousand numerical simulations of 3D observations using reasonable assumptions about the site, telescope, and instrument, and about the physics of distant galaxies. These data-cubes were analysed as real data to produce realistic kinematic measurements of very distant galaxies. We then studied how sensible the scientific goals are to the observational (i.e., site-, telescope-, and instrument-related) and physical (i.e., galaxy-related) parameters. We specifically investigated the impact of AO performance on the science goal. We did not identify any breaking points with respect to the parameters (e.g., the telescope diameter), with the exception of the telescope thermal background, which strongly limits the performance in the highest (z>5) redshift bin. We find that a survey of Ngal galaxies that fulfil the range of science goals can be achieved with a ~90 nights program on the E-ELT, provided a multiplex capability M Ngal/8.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA