The Formation of Intermediate-Mass Galaxies over the Last 8 Gyrs
Résumé
The physical processes driving the growth of galaxies can be robustly investigated all the way to z = 1, i.e. when the Universe was only about 40% of its current age. The advantage of restricting ourselves to this redshift range is that the total stellar mass, extinction, star-formation rate, gas-phase metal abundance, and galaxy kinematics can be recovered with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, half of the stars in spirals were formed less than 8 Gyrs ago. More practically, as we shall show, the current generation of instruments at the ESO VLT allows us to study galaxies up to z = 1 at approximately the same level of detail as what has been done for nearby galaxies. Here we present the first results of the properties of galaxies out to this redshift based on a moderately large sample of 0.4 < z < 1 galaxies using VLT/FORS, ISAAC and GIRAFFE. This study has allowed us to investigate the important physical processes that shaped galaxies including merging, gas accretion, and feedback from intense star formation.