| 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. |
