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The Effect of Environment on Merger Activity, Star Formation, and AGN Activity in the COSMOS Field

Krystal TYLER
(Rochester Institute of Technology)

The environment of a galaxy has a profound effect on its evolution. While local clusters are dominated by "red and dead" bulge-dominated galaxies, clusters at increasing redshift have increasing numbers of star forming galaxies and increasing levels of star formation and AGN activity. Indeed, in some studies, the increasing star formation in clusters with redshift outpaces the star formation in the field, causing the local well-known star formation-density relation to reverse at z > 1. The dominant cause(s) of this dynamic shift in activity between different environments with redshift remains unknown, though it is suspected that higher merger rates and gas fractions play a significant role. We are in the process of combining existing COSMOS data, including Herschel far-IR observations, with deep Hubble imaging to probe merger activity, star formation, and AGN activity in a variety of environments across a wide range of redshifts. This involves measuring the fluxes of PACS and SPIRE sources consistently across the field, taking into account confusion/blending effects, and running SED fitting routines with appropriate models to accurately estimate star formation rates and AGN activity.


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