Star-formation history of the universe and its drivers

Abstract

Determining the cosmic star formation history of the Universe is fundamental for our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. While surveys now suggest that the "epoch" of galaxy formation occurred more than 6 billion years ago, our measurements still suff er from signi ficant scatter and uncertainties due to the use of diff erent indicators, dust extinction and the e ffects of cosmic variance in the current samples. Furthermore, understanding galaxy formation and evolution require us to go much beyond simply determining the star formation history of the Universe with high accuracy: what are the physical mechanisms driving the strong evolution that we observe? How does star formation depend on stellar mass and environment and how does that change with cosmic time? This thesis presents both a completely self-consistent determination of the star formation history of the Universe (based on a single, sensitive and well-calibrated star formation indicator up to redshift z ~ 2:3: the H α luminosity) and investigates its drivers by exploring large area surveys (probing a range of environments and overcoming cosmic variance) obtained with the High-redshift Emission Line Survey (HiZELS). HiZELS is a panoramic extragalactic survey using the WFCAM instrument on the 3.8-m UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) which utilizes a set of existing and custom-made narrow-band filters in the J, H and K bands to detect emission line galaxies (main targets are H α emitters at z = 0:84, z = 1:47 and z = 2:23) up to z ~ 9 over square degree areas of extragalactic sky. Detailed measurements of the H α luminosity function and its evolution with redshift are presented, revealing a signi ficant luminosity evolution. The clustering properties of H α emitters at high-redshift are quantifi ed and investigated for the first time, revealing that these distant galaxies reside in Milky-Way type dark matter haloes at z ~ 1. Mass and environment are found to have important and inter-dependent roles on star formation at high-z and the results are able to reconcile previously contradictory results in the literature. Furthermore, by conducting a novel double-narrow band survey at z = 1:47, the relationship between the [Oii]3727 and H α emission lines is studied in detail and directly compared to z ~ 0, showing no signifi cant evolution in the dust properties of star-forming galaxies, despite the very strong luminosity evolution. Finally, this thesis also presents the widest search for very distant Ly α emitters at z ~ 9.