Description |
Herschel-GAMA: Gas-fuelling, Feedback and Star-Formation in Galaxy Groups in the Local Volume
Under the Cold Dark Matter paradigm the propensity of intergalactic baryons to cool and accrete onto existing galaxies or form new galaxies depends both on the mass of the inhabited dark matter halo through the process of virialisation, as well as on the mass, dynamical state and gas content of individual galaxies, since the latter can either enhance or hinder accretion though so-called feedback from starformation or AGN activity. We have used the unprecedented density of redshifts furnished by the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) deep wide field spectroscopic survey to identify the first statistically significant sample of low mass groups, opening the way for deep pointed multiwavelength investigations to probe baryonic processes over a more representative population of haloes than previously possible. Here we propose deep pointed miniscan exposures with PACS at 70, 110 and 160 microns of a representative subsample of 57 low-mass blue sequence member galaxies of GAMA groups with z less than 0.04 spanning a range in dynamical mass between 10^11 and 7.10^13 M_solar and a range in galaxian stellar masses from 10^8.0 to 10^9.25, parameter space that has not yet been surveyed in the FIR. Combining this with corresponding multiwavelength data on existing blind surveys covering the GAMA footprint and deep surveys of massive clusters, we will provide a complete picture of the UV-FIR/submm emission from blue sequence galaxies spanning four orders of magnitude in host halo mass and three orders of magnitude in stellar mass. This will provide a comprehensive picture of the variation of present day SF activity with environment which will serve as a fundamental empirical constraint on the baryonic processes determining the relation of our visual perception of the Universe to its underlying DM structure. |