The formation of the first galaxies marks the end of the cosmic dark ages, initiating the prolonged process of reionization and enriching the pristine intergalactic medium with the first heavy chemical elements. It is now possible to simulate this process with ever greater detail of physical realism, while still considering the proper cosmological context. The simulations have taught us that the feedback from Population III stars is vital in shaping the properties of early galaxies. We are close in pushing ab initio simulations to the point where future instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, can directly test theoretical predictions.

The quest for a better understanding of the evolution of massive galaxies can be broadly summarised with 2 questions: how did they build up their large (stellar) masses and what eventually quenched their star formation (SF)? To tackle these questions, we use high-resolution ramses simulations (Teyssier 2002) to study several aspects of the detailed interplay between accretion (mergers and cold flows), SF and feedback in individual galaxies. We examine SF in major mergers; a process crucial to stellar mass assembly. We explore whether the merger-induced, clustered SF is as important a mechanism in average mergers, as it is in extreme systems like the Antennae. We find that interaction-induced turbulence drives up the velocity dispersion, and that there is a correlated rise in SFR in all our simulated mergers as the density pdf evolves to have an excess of very dense gas. Next, we introduce a new study into whether mechanical jet feedback can impact upon the ability of hot gas haloes to provide a supply of fuel for SF during mergers and in their remnants. Finally, we briefly review our recent study, in which we examine the effect of supernova (SN) feedback on galaxies accreting via the previously overlooked cold-mode, by resimulating a stream-fed galaxy at z ~ 9. A far-reaching galactic wind results yet it cannot suppress the cold, filamentary accretion or eject significant mass in order to reduce the SFR, suggesting that SN feedback may not be as effective as is often assumed.

The First Billion Years is one of the largest and most comprehensive cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation of the early Universe to date. It studies the formation of the first proto-galaxies down to redshift 6, and provides the path of the evolution from proto-galaxies to the observed galaxy population at redshift 4. It also provides predictions for future observations.

We present the results from our cosmological simulations of the first stages of galaxy formation. We use Gadget-2 (Springel 2005), modified to include detailed cooling, chemistry, and radiative transfer of primordial gas to study the impact of the first stars on galaxy formation. In contrast to previous work, we apply a realistic treatment of stellar feedback by using updated stellar models for the first stars. In this proceeding, we briefly summarize how stellar feedback from the first stars affects the primordial IGM inside the first galaxies.

We have exploited the new, deep, near-infrared Y,J,H,Ks UltraVISTA imaging of the COSMOS field, in tandem with deep optical and mid-infrared imaging, to conduct a new search for luminous galaxies at redshifts z ≃ 7. We have utilised this unique multi-wavelength dataset to select galaxy candidates at redshifts z > 6.5 by searching first for Y+J-detected objects which are undetected in the CFHT and HST optical data. This sample was then refined using a photometric redshift fitting code, enabling the rejection of lower-redshift galaxy contaminants and cool galactic M, L, T dwarf stars. The final result of this process is a small sample of (at most) ten credible galaxy candidates at z > 6.5 (from over 200,000 galaxies detected in the year-one UltraVISTA data). The new z ≃ 7 galaxies reported here are the first credible z ≃ 7 Lyman-break galaxies discovered in the COSMOS field and, as the most UV-luminous discovered to date at these redshifts, are prime targets for deep follow-up spectroscopy. We explore their physical properties, and briefly consider the implications of their inferred number density for the form of the galaxy luminosity function at z ≃ 7.

We present a search for CO emission in a massive lyman break galaxy at z ~ 4.05.

Once understood as the paradigm of passively evolving objects, the discovery that massive galaxies experienced an enormous structural evolution in the last ten billion years has opened an active line of research. The most significant pending question in this field is the following: which mechanism has made galaxies to grow largely in size without altering their stellar populations properties dramatically? The most viable explanation is that massive galaxies have undergone a significant number of minor mergers which have deposited most of their material in the outer regions of the massive galaxies. This scenario, although appealing, is still far from be observationally proved since the number of satellite galaxies surrounding the massive objects appears insufficient at all redshifts. The presence also of a population of nearby massive compact galaxies with mixture stellar properties is another piece of the puzzle that still does not nicely fit within a comprehensive scheme. I will review these and other intriguing properties of the massive galaxies in this contribution.

The evolution of masses and sizes of passive (early-type) galaxies with redshift provides ideal constraints to galaxy formation models. These parameters can in principle be obtained for large galaxy samples from multi-band photometry alone. However the accuracy of photometric masses is limited by the non-universality of the IMF. Galaxy sizes can be biased at high redshift due to the inferior quality of the imaging data. Both problems can be avoided using galaxy dynamics, and in particular by measuring the galaxies stellar velocity dispersion. Here we provide an overview of the efforts in this direction.

Galaxy assembly is an unsolved problem, with ΛCDM theoretical models unable to easily account for among other things, the abundances of massive galaxies, and the observed merger history. We show here how the problem of galaxy formation can be addressed in an empirical way without recourse to models. We discuss how galaxy assembly occurs at 1.5 < z < 3 examining the role of major and minor mergers, and gas accretion from the intergalactic medium in forming massive galaxies with log M* > 11 found within the GOODS NICMOS Survey (GNS). We find that major mergers, minor mergers and gas accretion are roughly equally important in the galaxy formation process during this epoch, with 64% of the mass assembled through merging and 36% through accreted gas which is later converted to stars, while 58% of all new star formation during this epoch arises from gas accretion. We also discuss how the total gas accretion rate is measured as Ṁ = 90±40 M⊙ yr−1 at this epoch, a value close to those found in some hydrodynamical simulations.

We have used high-resolution, HST WFC3/IR, near-infrared imaging to conduct a detailed bulge-disk decomposition of the morphologies of ≃ 200 of the most massive (M* > 1011 M⊙) galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in the CANDELS-UDS field. We find that, while such massive galaxies at low redshift are generally bulge-dominated, at redshifts 1<z<2 they are predominantly mixed bulge+disk systems, and by z > 2 they are mostly disk-dominated. Interestingly, we find that while most of the quiescent galaxies are bulge-dominated, a significant fraction (25–40%) of the most quiescent galaxies, have disk-dominated morphologies. Thus, our results suggest that the physical mechanisms which quench star-formation activity are not simply connected to those responsible for the morphological transformation of massive galaxies.

We have obtained high-resolution F110W (~ J) and F160W (~ H) band observations of ten submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) with the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS camera, in order to resolve their rest-frame optical morphologies, determine the existence of multiple-component, merger-like configurations, and estimate their stellar masses. The selected targets have redshifts in the range 2.2≤ z ≤ 2.81 confirmed with millimeter or mid-IR spectroscopy, guaranteeing that the two bands sample the galaxies' rest-frame optical light with the Balmer break falling between them.

Nearby galaxies come in two flavors: red quiescent galaxies (QGs) with old stellar populations, and blue young star-forming galaxies (SFGs). This color bimodality seems to be already in place at z = 2 − 3, presenting also strong correlations with size and morphology. Surprisingly, massive QGs at higher redshifts are ~5 times smaller than local, equal mass analogs. In contrast, most of the massive SFGs at these redshifts are still relatively large disks. The strong bimodality in both SFR and sizes indicates that some SFGs must experience strong structural transformations accompanied by a rapid truncation of the star-formation to match the observed properties of QGs. Using high-resolution HST/WFC3 F160W imaging from the CANDELS survey in GOODS-S and UDS, along with multi-wavelength ancillary data, we analyze stellar masses, SFRs and sizes of a sample of massive (M* > 1010M⊙) galaxies at z = 1.4 − 3.0 to identify a population of compact SFGs with similar structural properties as compact QGs at z~2. We also find that the number density of QGs increases rapidly since z = 3. Among these, the number of compact QGs builds up first, and only at z < 1.8 we do start finding a sizable number of extended QGs. This suggests that the bulk of these galaxies are assembled at late times by both continuous migration (quenching) of non-compact SFGs and size growth of cQGs. As a result of this growth, the population of cQGs disappears by z~1. Simultaneously, we identify a population of compact SFGs (cSFGs) whose number density decreases steadily with time since z = 3.0, being almost completely absent at z < 1.4. The number of cSFGs makes up less than 20% of all massive SFGs, but they present similar number densities as cQGs down to z~2, suggesting an evolutionary link between the two populations.

We investigate the MgII 2800 and CIV 1540 absorption features of the gas in the halo of a foreground QSO through the absorption imprinting on the spectra of a background QSO that is closely aligned with the nearest quasar. We present the results for 13 QSO pairs (0.7 < z < 2.2) that allow us to probe the gas at distances between 60 kpc and 120 kpc from the QSO nucleus. We identify absorption features associated with the foreground QSO in 7 out of 10 systems for MgII, and one out of 3 for CIV (see example in Fig. 1). At variance with the case of inactive and less massive galaxies we find that relatively strong (EW ~ 1 Ang) absorption features are present out to a radius of 100 kpc. This suggests that a large extended halo is associated with massive galaxies.

The comparison of these results with those for inactive (not hosting active black holes) galaxies (see e.g. Chen et al. 2010a) shows that the halo of QSOs is similar to that of inactive galaxies. In the observed sample we do not detect a significant enhancement of the absorption strengths, as it could be expected if the QSO nuclear activity were driven by intense gas accretion onto the black hole. Moreover along the line of sight of the QSO we do not detect any Mg II absorbers of the same strength of the transverse one. These results are in agreement with models that consider a non-isotropic emission of the QSO, which are hosted by massive gaseous halos.

We select ten passively evolving and massive galaxies at redshift z ~ 2 from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). We derive the stellar properties of these galaxies using the multiwavelength HST WFC3 and ACS data, together with Spitzer IRAC observations. We also analyze the optical rest-frame morphology of these high redshift objects by using the GALFIT package (Peng et al. 2002). The observed near-IR images, obtained with the HST/WFC3 camera with high spatial resolution and amplified by the foreground clusters, provide us with a good chance to study the structures of such systems. Six out of ten galaxies have on average a four times smaller effective radius, in agreement with previous works at redshift z ~ 2.

It is now clear that the epoch when the Universe was half of its current age is a crucial period during which galaxies assembled their mass and evolved into the galaxies we observe in the local Universe. However, so far only very few direct studies of mass assembly in action, hence galaxy merging, were conducted over z=1 and usually relied on very small or biased samples. Based on very deep near infrared survey data, the latest UKIDSS-UDS DR8, combined with the optical data conducted by Subaru and CFHT and Spitzer IRAC observations, we explored the evolution of the merging rate up to z = 2, over the largest volume of the Universe at 0.4<z<2 ever sampled. The pair fraction is found to decrease by a factor of two during this period, and wet (gas rich) mergers dominate largely. The dry mergers are very rare, ruling it out as the main mechanism for the mass assembly of passive massive galaxies. Also while massive galaxies undergo a decrease of their pair fraction during this period, less massive systems follow an increase during the same period.

We have measured the angular two-point correlation function of EROs. The halo model is fitted to the observed clustering, and dark matter halo mass, bias and satellite fraction are estimated in three redshift bins. We also compare our results with the semi-analytical galaxy formation model. This work illustrates the power of clustering analysis in providing observational constraints on simulations.

Cl J1449+0856 is a spectroscopically confirmed galaxy cluster at z ~ 2. The detection of a faint, extended X-ray emission, suggestive of an already evolved, partially relaxed structure, puts this system among the most distant “established” clusters rather than in the realm of z≳2 proto-clusters. This gives us a chance of studying galaxies in an evolved overdense environment very close to their formation epoch, and in particular to trace the evolution of early-type galaxies in clusters back to ten billion years ago.

At a cosmic time when galaxy clusters start showing evidence of a still active galaxy population, the X-ray luminous, massive cluster XMMU J2235-2557 at z=1.39, already hosts massive, quiescent, early-type galaxies on a tight red sequence dominating the cluster core. XMMU J2235-2557 is among the most massive of the very distant clusters, which may explain the evolved status of the system itself, and of its host galaxy populations. It remains a unique laboratory to observe environment-biased galaxy evolution already 9 billion years ago.

Using the Monte Carlo simulations and a set of theoretical galaxy templates, which are built on the Yunnan evolutionary population synthesis models with and without binary interactions, we compare the optical color-color (C-C) relations for passive and star-forming galaxies at redshift z~2.0, and study the effect of binary interactions on this relation. We find that the influence of binary interactions on the C-C relation is insignificant for passive galaxies at z~2.0.

We present an analysis of the lensed Lyman Break Galaxy (LBG), the 8 o'clock arc, at redshift 2.735. We reduced Near-IR IFU data from SINFONI on VLT covering λ= 2900 Å to 6500 Å in the rest-frame. From this we recovered the Hβ map and the spatially-resolved Hβ profile which are shown in the right plot in Fig. 1. We can see that Hβ shows different profiles at different spatial pixels and it is composed of multiple components. To study the de-lensed morphology of the galaxy we make use of existing B & H band imaging from the HST. Based on this we constructed a rigorous lens model for the system using the Bayesian grid based lens modeling technique presented by Vegetti & Koopmans (2009, MNRAS, 392, 945). In order to obtain a robust lens model, we first considered the high resolution B band HST image (rest-frame UV, left plot in Fig. 1) and then used this modeling to reconstruct the Hβ line map of the galaxy. We then present the de-lensed Hβ line map, velocity and velocity dispersion maps of this LBG galaxy.