Description |
Massive clusters of galaxies have been found to date from as early as 3-4 billion years after the Big Bang. Cosmological simulations using the current cold dark matter model predict that these systems should descend from .proto-clusters. - early overdensities of massive galaxies that merge hierarchically to form a cluster. These protocluster regions themselves are built up hierarchically and so are expected to contain extremely massive galaxies, progenitors of the quiescent behemoths observed in cores of the present day massive galaxy clusters. Observational evidence for this picture, however, is sparse because high-redshift proto-clusters are rare and difficult to observe. Here we propose to probe with Herschel SPIRE the very beginning of the cluster and massive galaxies formation process by observing 5 proto-clusters at 3<z<4. The aim of the project is to observe the entire Ultraluminous IR galaxy (ULIRG) population, dominating the bulk of the star formation at such high redshift, to compare the properties of the proto-cluster galaxies with those of field galaxies at similar redshift. Determining whether cluster galaxies differ from field galaxies when the proto-cluster was still forming, tells us whether any of the difference observed today is driven by nature as apposed to nurture. |