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The chemical composition of gas in galaxies can be measured in detail from absorption spectroscopy. By studying gas in galaxies in this way, it is possible to investigate the small and faint galaxies, which are the most numerous in the universe. In particular, the chemical distribution of gas in absorbing systems gives us insight into cycles of gas in and around galaxies. Here we study chemical enrichment within 64 Damped Lyman-alpha Absorption (DLA) systems between $1.7 < z < 4.2$. We use high-resolution spectra from VLT/UVES to infer dust depletion from relative abundances of several metals. We perform a component-by-component analysis within DLAs, and characterise variations in their chemical enrichment. Unlike hydrogen, the metal columns can be characterised for individual components. We use them to derive the dust depletion ([Zn/Fe]fit), as an indicator for chemical enrichment. We find that some DLAs are chemically diverse within themselves, with [Zn/Fe]fit ranging up to 0.62 dex within a single system. This suggests that absorbing gas within these galaxies is chemically diverse. Although we do not find a clear trend of decreasing dust depletion with redshift, we do see that the most chemically enriched systems are at lower redshifts. We also observe evidence for dust-poor components at all redshifts, which may be due to the accretion of pristine gas onto galaxies. We combine the chemical and kinematic properties of the individual gas components and observe potential signatures of infalling gas, with low depletion at velocities below $\sim$100km/s, and outflows, with high depletion and velocities of $\sim$600km/s. We find over-abundances of alpha-elements (an enhancement of $\sim$0.3dex) and under-abundances of Mn in several components, which is likely a signature of core-collapse SNe nucleosythesis in the ISM. We observe these effects mostly at lower levels of chemical enrichment., 56 pages, 99 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A, Abstract abridged for arXiv

In the theory of the bottom-up assembly of cosmic structures, one of the main challenges is to connect the smallest, most inconspicuous galaxies we observe today to the building blocks of more massive galaxies such as our own, the Milky Way. Do these so-called dwarf galaxies resemble the first galaxies formed in the Universe? Their small size and the preponderance of dark matter in dwarf galaxies, as well as their inner mass distribution, reinforce this idea. These characteristics make them excellent probes for cosmological models on small scales and the nature of dark matter. Having the simplest assembly histories of all galaxies, dwarfs are also dominated by old stellar populations. They underwent little to no further evolution after the Epoch of Reionization and constitute pristine relics of the early-Universe. In the first part of this thesis, using cosmological simulations, we show the impact of initial conditions generated in the early Universe, particularly primordial magnetic fields (PMFs), on the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxies. We show that the impact of primordial fields on galaxy formation is twofold: 1. The number of dark halos around the Milky Way able to host dwarf galaxies is boosted. 2. An earlier onset of star formation plus a higher rate of forming stars induces a large amount of ionizing photons at high redshifts. Through this work we show that PMFs have a significant role in initiating the structure formation in the Universe, and obtain strong constraints on the properties of PMFs. Then we address the impact of PMFs on galaxy formation in opposition to the pressure support produced by magnetic fields in the interstellar medium of galaxies, to find the dominant agent. We conclude that because of the shallow potential well in low mass dwarfs, magnetic pressure not only can immensely decrease the stellar mass, but also can delay the onset of star formation. This effect can entirely prevent the collapse of gas clouds in the lowest mass halos and result in an increased number of dark halos. Yet the impact of a primordially sourced magnetic field dominates over its later-time impacts. In the third part of this thesis, we target the elusive characteristics of the faintest galaxies, ultra faint dwarfs (UFDs). We explore how the first generations of metal-free stars (Pop III) could increase the mean metallicity of these galaxies. In this work, we show that massive Pop III stars which explode as energetic pair-instability supernovae increase the metal content of UFDs. However, being very rare and sometimes absent in the faintest UFDs, they have a limited impact on the global faint end of the metallicity-luminosity relation. Taken together these three parts have increased our knowledge of the early stages of galaxy formation. How the cosmology in the early-Universe, in particular the frequently neglected PMFs, impact the formation and evolution of the first galaxies. What is the impact of magnetic fields on the interstellar medium and the star formation history of dwarf galaxies? What is the impact of first stars on the metal-enrichment occurring during the process of galaxy formation? These questions have been explored in this PhD thesis.

Recent studies show the possibility of the formation of fairly regular and global spiral patterns in dwarf galaxies (dS type). Our sample of observed dwarf objects of this class also includes galaxies with a central stellar bar. The analysis of the observational data provides a small rotation velocity and a small disk component mass for dS galaxies, which is in poor agreement with the spiral structure generation mechanism in isolated dwarfs due to the development of disk gravitational instability. Numerical simulation of the stellar–gaseous disks self-consistent dynamics imposes restrictions on the stellar disk thickness and the maximum gas rotation velocity, at which the gravitational mechanism of spiral formation can still be effective., Последние исследования указывают на возможность формирования в карликовых галактиках (dS) достаточно правильных и глобальных спиральных узоров. Наша выборка наблюдаемых объектов этого класса включает также галактики с центральной перемычкой. Анализ данных наблюдений дает маленькую скорость вращения и маленькую массу дисковой компоненты у dS-галактик, что плохо согласуется с гравитационным механизмом генерации спиральной структуры у изолированных карликов. Численное моделирование динамики звездно-газовых дисков дает ограничения на толщину звездного диска и максимальную скорость вращения газа, при которых гравитационный механизм образования спиралей может являться еще эффективным.

One of the most fundamental baryonic matter components of galaxies is the neutral atomic hydrogen (H I). At low redshifts, this component can be traced directly through the 21 cm transition, but to infer the H I gas content of the most distant galaxies, a viable tracer is needed. We here investigate the fidelity of the fine-structure transition of the (P-2(3/2) - P-2(1/3)) transition of singly ionized carbon C II at 158 mu m as a proxy for H I in a set simulated galaxies at z approximate to 6, following the work by Heintz et al. We select 11,125 star-forming galaxies from the SIMBA simulations, with far-infrared line emissions postprocessed and modeled within the SIGAME framework. We find a strong connection between C II and H I, with the relation between this C I relation (beta([C II])) being anticorrelated with the gas-phase metallicity of the simulated galaxies. We further use these simulations to make predictions for the total baryonic matter content of galaxies at z approximate to 6, and specifically the H I gas mass fraction. We find mean values of M-H I/M-* = 1.4 and M-H I/ M-bar,M-tot = 0.45. These results provide strong evidence for H I being the dominant baryonic matter component by mass in galaxies at z approximate to 6.

In order to explain the lack of star formation of the galaxy stellar mass function in the low and more massive range, the common theoretical model is due to two feedback proccesses depending to the mass range. In one hand, supernovae is putting energy in low mass galaxies, expelling the gas away from the center of the galaxy and reducing that way the amount of cooling and, thus, the amount of star formation. On the other hand, when you go to more massive galaxies, the supernovae is not efficient enough to reduce the star formation and thus you need the effect of BH feedback to quenched this galaxies. In the last few years, several observational studies, as Mezcua+18, have found some population of dwarf galaxies in which AGN feedback may also play an importan role. To better understand how AGN could affect dwarf galaxies, I used a set of 12 dwarf galaxies run with the AURIGA galaxy formation model. Each galaxy was run with and without BH to isolate the effects of the AGN feedback. If we go back to the stellar-to-halo-mass relation and look at the point (each color representing one of the galaxies of my set) the dot represent the configuration run with black hole while the cross point represent the configuration without. You can see how, the configuration without BH tends to have more stellar mass that their counterparts. That's means AGN feedback could be shutting down star formation. If we now take a look into the star formation history of each galaxy (dark line is shown the mass of the BH through the time), galaxies with a larger black hole also have an huge gap in the star formation history between these two configurations, where the one without BH have more star formation. For the galaxy with the largest BH, if we increase the resolution, the gap is even more noticeable. Also, we can see the effect of the BH by looking into the brightness and dark matter profiles. The inner part of the galaxy are less bright and also less dense for the one with AGN feedback. Finally, we can also check the kinematic properties by making a 2D maps velocity. AGN have an impact into the rotation, making the galaxy slower that its counterpart, and also less dense., {"references":["Mezcua et al. (2018). Decouple software associated to arXiv:2110.08629","Latimer et al. (2021). Decouple software associated to arXiv:2111.10388","Davis et al. (2022). Decouple software associated to arXiv:2201.09903","Benson et al. (2003). Decouple software associated to arXiv:astro-ph/0302450","Koudmani et al. (2021). Decouple software associated to arXiv:2007.10342","Sharma et al. (2021). Decouple software associated to arXiv:1912.06646","Grand et al. (2017). Decouple software associated to arXiv:1610.01159","Waterval et al. (2022). Decouple software associated to arXiv:2204.13373"]}

Warps are vertical distortions of the stellar or gaseous disks of galaxies. One of the proposed scenarios for the formation of warps involves tidal interactions among galaxies. A recent study identified a stellar warp in the outer regions of the south-western (SW) disk of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and suggested that it might have originated due to the tidal interaction between the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Due to the limited spatial coverage of the data, the authors could not investigate the counterpart of this warp in the north-eastern (NE) region, which is essential to understanding the global shape, nature, and origin of the outer LMC warp. In this work, we study the structure of the LMC disk using data on red clump stars from the Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3), which cover the entire Magellanic system. We detected a warp in the NE outer LMC disk which is deviated from the disk plane in the same direction as that of the SW outer warp, but with a lower amplitude. This suggests that the outer LMC disk has an asymmetric stellar warp, which is likely to be a U-shaped warp. Our result provides an observational constraint to the theoretical models of the Magellanic system aimed at improving the understanding the LMC-SMC interaction history., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A and in press

The past decade has seen significant progress in understanding galaxy formation and evolution using large-scale cosmological simulations. While these simulations produce galaxies in overall good agreement with observations, they employ different sub-grid models for galaxies and supermassive black holes (BHs). We investigate the impact of the sub-grid models on the BH mass properties of the Illustris, TNG100, TNG300, Horizon-AGN, EAGLE, and SIMBA simulations, focusing on the M_BH-M_star relation and the BH mass function. All simulations predict tight M_BH-M_star relations, and struggle to produce the lowest (M_BH< 10^7.5 Msun) in galaxies of M_star~10^10.5-10^11.5 Msun. While the time evolution of the mean M_BH-M_star relation is mild (10^9 Msun in most of the simulations. The BH mass function is dominated by efficiently accreting BHs (log10 f_Edd >-2$) at high redshifts, and transitions progressively from the high-mass to the low-mass end to be governed by inactive BHs. The transition time and the contribution of active BHs are different among the simulations, and can be used to evaluate models against observations., Comment: Published version - MNRAS

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., The two sources AGC 226178 and NGVS 3543, an extremely faint, clumpy, blue stellar system and a low surface brightness dwarf spheroidal, are adjacent systems in the direction of the Virgo cluster. Both have been studied in detail previously, with it being suggested that they are unrelated normal dwarf galaxies or that NGVS 3543 recently lost its gas through ram pressure stripping and AGC 226178 formed from this stripped gas. However, with Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging, we demonstrate that the stellar population of NGVS 3543 is inconsistent with being at the distance of the Virgo cluster and that it is likely a foreground object at approximately 10 Mpc, whereas the stellar population of AGC 226178 is consistent with it being a very young (10–100 Myr) object in the Virgo cluster. Through a reanalysis of the original ALFALFA H i detection, we show that AGC 226178 likely formed from gas stripped from the nearby dwarf galaxy VCC 2034, a hypothesis strengthened by the high metallicity measured with MUSE VLT observations. However, it is unclear whether ram pressure or a tidal interaction is responsible for stripping the gas. Object AGC 226178 is one of at least five similar objects now known toward Virgo. These objects are all young and unlikely to remain visible for over ∼500 Myr, suggesting that they are continually produced in the cluster. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society., This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. These observations are associated with program No. HST-GO-15183. Support for program No. HST-GO-15183 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. It is also based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO program 0101.B-0376A. This work used archival data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The data were observed as part of program 13A-028 (PI: J. Cannon). The work used images from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS; proposal ID 2014B-0404; PIs: David Schlegel and Arjun Dey). Full acknowledgment at https://www.legacysurvey.org/acknowledgment/. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS website is http://www.sdss.org/. D.J.S. acknowledges support from NSF grants AST-1821967 and 1813708. M.B. acknowledges financial support of this research from INAF Main Stream grant 1.05.01.86.28 assigned to the program The Smallest Scale of the Hierarchy (SSH). K.S. acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). B.M.P. is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-2001663. E.A.K.A. is supported by the WISE research program, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). G.B. acknowledges financial support through grant (AEI/FEDER, UE) AYA2017-89076-P, as well as by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through the state budget and by the Consejería de Economía, Industria, Comercio y Conocimiento of the Canary Islands Autonomous Community through the regional budget. J.S. acknowledges support from the Packard Foundation. M.P.H. acknowledges support from NSF/AST-1714828 and grants from the Brinson Foundation. J.M.C., J.F., and J.L.I. are supported by NST/AST 2009894. R.R.M. gratefully acknowledges support from project ANID PIA/BASAL FB210003. Research by D.C. is supported by NSF grant AST-1814208. AK acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709).

Dwarf galaxies are by far the most numerous galaxies in the Universe, showing properties that are quite different from those of their larger and more luminous cousins. This review focuses on the physical and chemical properties of the interstellar medium of those dwarfs that are known to host significant amounts of gas and dust. The neutral and ionized gas components and the impact of the dust will be discussed, as well as first indications for the existence of active nuclei in these sources. Cosmological implications are also addressed, considering the primordial helium abundance and the similarity of local Green Pea galaxies with young, sometimes proto-galactic sources in the early Universe., 29 pages, 10 figures, review article in Galaxies, volume 10

The different projects of this thesis contribute to improving our understanding of the early chemical evolution of the galaxies. The standard cosmological model states an hierarchical formation of the galaxies, the dwarf galaxies being the first stellar systems to form in the early Universe, merging to build larger galaxies over time. Observing the oldest stars in different environments can therefore answer many questions for the models of galaxy formation. Do the old stellar populations of the dwarf galaxies share the same chemical abundance patterns as the Milky Way halo ? These oldest and extremely metal-poor stars (EMP, [Fe/H]

We assemble a large comprehensive sample of 2534 z~2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 galaxies lensed by the six clusters from the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) program. Making use of the availability of multiple independent magnification models for each of the HFF clusters and alternatively treating one of the models as the "truth," we show that the median magnification factors from the v4 parametric models are typically reliable to values of 30 to 50, and in one case to 100. Using the median magnification factor from the latest v4 models, we estimate the UV luminosities of the 2534 lensed z~2-9 galaxies, finding sources as faint as -12.4 mag at z~3 and -12.9 mag at z~7. We explicitly demonstrate the power of the surface density-magnification relations Sigma(z) vs. mu in the HFF clusters to constrain both distant galaxy properties and cluster lensing properties. Based on the Sigma(z) vs. mu relations, we show that the median magnification estimates from existing public models must be reliable predictors of the true magnification mu to mu, 22 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, updated to be consistent with the proofs

It has been shown some years ago that dark matter haloes outskirts are characterized by very steep density profiles in a very small radial range. This feature has been interpreted as a pile up of at a similar location of different particle orbits, namely splashback material at half an orbit after collapse. Adhikari et al. (2014), obtained the location of the splashback radius through a very simple model, namely calculating a dark matter shell trajectory in the secondary infall model while it crosses a growing, NFW profile shaped, dark matter halo. Since they imposed a halo profile instead of calculating it from the trajectories of the shells of dark matter, they were not able to find the dark matter profile around the splashback radius. In the present paper, we use an improved spherical infall model taking into shell crossing, and several physical effects like ordered, and random angular momentum, dynamical friction, adiabatic contraction, etc. This allow us to determine the density profile from the inner to outer region, and study the behavior of the outer density profile. We will compare the density profiles, and the logarithmic slope of the density profile with the results of Diemer \& Kravtsov (2014) simulations, finding a good agreement between the prediction of the model and the simulations., 9 pp, 3 figs

Mau et al., We use a recent census of the Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxy population to constrain the lifetime of particle dark matter (DM). We consider two-body decaying dark matter (DDM) in which a heavy DM particle decays with lifetime τ comparable to the age of the universe to a lighter DM particle (with mass splitting epsilon) and to a dark radiation species. These decays impart a characteristic "kick velocity," Vkick = epsilonc, on the DM daughter particles, significantly depleting the DM content of low-mass subhalos and making them more susceptible to tidal disruption. We fit the suppression of the present-day DDM subhalo mass function (SHMF) as a function of τ and Vkick using a suite of high-resolution zoom-in simulations of MW-mass halos, and we validate this model on new DDM simulations of systems specifically chosen to resemble the MW. We implement our DDM SHMF predictions in a forward model that incorporates inhomogeneities in the spatial distribution and detectability of MW satellites and uncertainties in the mapping between galaxies and DM halos, the properties of the MW system, and the disruption of subhalos by the MW disk using an empirical model for the galaxy–halo connection. By comparing to the observed MW satellite population, we conservatively exclude DDM models with τ < 18 Gyr (29 Gyr) for Vkick = 20 kms−1 (40 kms−1) at 95% confidence. These constraints are among the most stringent and robust small-scale structure limits on the DM particle lifetime and strongly disfavor DDM models that have been proposed to alleviate the Hubble and S8 tensions., Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, NSF's NOIRLab, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at NSF's NOIRLab (NOIRLab Prop. ID 2012B-0001; PI: J. Frieman), which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grants ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics.

The COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopic SurveY (CLASSY) is designed to provide the community with a spectral atlas of 45 nearby star-forming galaxies which were chosen to cover similar properties as those seen at high-z (z>6). The prime high level science product of CLASSY is accurately coadded UV spectra, ranging from ~1000-2000A, derived from a combination of archival and new data obtained with HST's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). This paper details the multi-stage technical processes of creating this prime data product, and the methodologies involved in extracting, reducing, aligning, and coadding far-ultraviolet (FUV) and near-ultraviolet (NUV) spectra. We provide guidelines on how to successfully utilize COS observations of extended sources, despite COS being optimized for point sources, and best-practice recommendations for the coaddition of UV spectra in general. Moreover, we discuss the effects of our reduction and coaddition techniques in the scientific application of the CLASSY data. In particular, we find that accurately accounting for flux calibration offsets can affect the derived properties of the stellar populations, while customized extractions of NUV spectra for extended sources are essential for correctly diagnosing the metallicity of galaxies via CIII] nebular emission. Despite changes in spectral resolution of up to ~25% between individual datasets (due to changes in the COS line spread function), no adverse affects were observed on the difference in velocity width and outflow velocities of isolated absorption lines when measured in the final combined data products, owing in-part to our signal-to-noise regime of S/N, 31 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS

We use the unprecedented resolution and depth of the JWST NIRCam Early Release Observations at 1-5 $\mu$m to study the stellar mass, age, and metallicity of compact star clusters in the neighborhood of the host galaxies in the SMACS J0723.3-7327 galaxy cluster field at z = 0.39. The measured colors of these star clusters show a similar distribution as quiescent galaxies at the same redshift, but are >3 magnitudes fainter than the current depths of wide-field galaxy survey. The star clusters are unresolved in the NIRCam/F150W data suggesting sizes smaller than 50pc. This is significantly smaller than star forming clumps or dwarf galaxies in local galaxies. From fitting their photometry with simple stellar population (SSP) models, we find stellar metallicities consistent with 0.2-0.3 $Z_{\odot}$ and ages of $1.5^{+0.5}_{-0.5}$ Gyrs. We rule out metallicities, Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

The satellite system of a large galaxy represents the ideal laboratory for the study of galactic evolution. Whether that evolution has been dominated by past mergers or in situ formation, clues abound within the structure of the satellite system. This study utilizes recent photometric data obtained for the halo of M31 via the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS), to undertake an analysis of the spatial distribution of the M31 satellite system. To do this, a new Bayesian algorithm is developed for measuring the distances to the satellites from the tip of their Red Giant Branch. The distances are obtained in the form of posterior probability distributions, which give the probability of the satellite lying at any given distance after accounting for the various spatial and photometric characteristics of the component stars. Thus robust distances are obtained for M31 and 27 of its satellite galaxies which are then transformed into three-dimensional, M31-centric positions yielding a homogenous sample of unprecedented size in any galaxy halo. A rigorous analysis of the resulting distribution is then undertaken, with the homogeneity of the sample fully exploited in characterizing the effects of data incompleteness. This analysis reveals a satellite distribution which as a whole, is roughly isothermal and no more planar than one would expect from a random distribution of equal size. A subset of 15 satellites is however found to be remarkably planar, with a root-mean-square thickness of just 12.34kpc. Of these satellites, 13 have subsequently been identified as co-rotating. This highly significant plane is all the more striking for its orientation. From the Earth we view it perfectly edge on and it is almost perpendicular to the Milky Way’s disk. Furthermore, it is roughly orthogonal to the disk-like structure commonly reported for the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. The distribution is also found to be highly asymmetric, with the majority of satellites lying on the near side of M31. These findings point to a complex evolutionary history with possible links to that of our own galaxy.

The ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II (Ret II) exhibits a unique chemical evolution history, with 72 +10/-12% of its stars strongly enhanced in r-process elements. We present deep Hubble Space Telescope photometry of Ret II and analyze its star formation history. As in other ultra-faint dwarfs, the color-magnitude diagram is best fit by a model consisting of two bursts of star formation. If we assume that the bursts were instantaneous, then the older burst occurred around the epoch of reionization and formed ~80% of the stars in the galaxy, while the remainder of the stars formed ~3 Gyr later. When the bursts are allowed to have nonzero durations we obtain slightly better fits. The best-fitting model in this case consists of two bursts beginning before reionization, with approximately half the stars formed in a short (100 Myr) burst and the other half in a more extended period lasting 2.6 Gyr. Considering the full set of viable star formation history models, we find that 28% of the stars formed within 500 +/- 200 Myr of the onset of star formation. The combination of the star formation history and the prevalence of r-process-enhanced stars demonstrates that the r-process elements in Ret II must have been synthesized early in its initial star-forming phase. We therefore constrain the delay time between the formation of the first stars in Ret II and the r-process nucleosynthesis to be less than 500 Myr. This measurement rules out an r-process source with a delay time of several Gyr or more such as GW170817., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJ

We present the first measurement of the metallicity gradient in extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs). With Subaru/Faint Object Camera And Spectrograph (FOCAS) Integral Field Unit (IFU), we have observed a nearby, low-mass EMPG, HSC J1631+4426, whose oxygen abundance and stellar mass are known to be 12+log(O/H) $=6.9$ and $\log_{10}(M_*/{\rm M}_\odot)=5.8$, respectively. The measured metallicity gradient is $-0.36 \pm 0.04$ dex kpc$^{-1}$ corresponding to $-0.049 \pm 0.006$ dex R$_\mathrm{e}^{-1}$ for the continuum effective radius of $R_\mathrm{e} = 0.14$ kpc. Our observation has successfully demonstrated that three-dimensional spectroscopy with 8m-class telescopes is powerful enough to reveal the metallicity distribution in local EMPGs, providing precious information of the baryon cycle in local analogs of primordial galaxies in the early Universe., Comment: PASJ accepted, 7 pages, 4 figures

Dwarf galaxies are the most numerous type of galaxy in the Universe, thus they play a significant role in the study of galaxy formation and evolution. In this thesis we studied stellar populations in the dwarf irregular galaxy Leo A. A study of old stellar populations enabled us to discover luminous asymptotic giant branch stars and a group of peculiar red giant branch stars. We found that the blue red giant branch stars are concentrated in the central part of Leo A, while the red ones have a more extended distribution. These results support the outside-in star formation scenario in Leo A. While studying young stellar populations, we determined the age of core-helium-burning stars and their spatial distribution. We found that ~15% of young stars in Leo A are emission-line stars. We also determined that stellar feedback from young stellar populations created a prominent hole in the H I gas disk and formed an ionized front along the edge of the hole.

We use the low surface brightness galaxy (LSBG) samples created from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (781 galaxies), the Dark Energy Survey (20977 galaxies), and the Legacy Survey (selected via H I detection in the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey, 188 galaxies) to infer the intrinsic shape distribution of the LSBG population. To take into account the effect of the surface brightness cuts employed when constructing LSBG samples, we simultaneously model both the projected ellipticity and the apparent surface brightness in our shape inference. We find that the LSBG samples are well characterized by oblate spheroids, with no significant difference between red and blue LSBGs. This inferred shape distribution is in good agreement with similar inferences made for ultra-diffuse cluster galaxy samples, indicating that environment does not play a key role in determining the intrinsic shape of LSBGs. We also find some evidence that LSBGs are more thickened than similarly massive high surface brightness dwarfs. We compare our results to intrinsic shape measures from contemporary cosmological simulations, and find that the observed LSBG intrinsic shapes place considerable constraints on the formation path of such galaxies. In particular, LSBG production via the migration of star formation to large radii produces intrinsic shapes in good agreement with our observational findings.

Possible dark matter candidates in particle physics span a mass range extending over fifty orders of magnitude. In this review, we consider the range of masses from a few keV to a few hundred TeV, which is relevant for cold particle dark matter. We will consider models where dark matter arises as weakly coupled elementary fields and models where dark matter is a composite state bound by a new strong interaction. Different production mechanisms for dark matter in these models will be described. The landscape of direct and indirect searches for dark matter and some of the resulting constraints on models will be briefly discussed.

The study of galaxy formation and evolution is a cornerstone in astrophysics, as galaxies connect together all scales of the Universe. The physical processes that govern galaxies therefore needs to be fully understood if we are to understand how our Universe works. The various morphologies of galaxies we see today indicate that there are multiple processes at play, that act both on and within galaxies. In our currently accepted paradigm, galaxies are expected to assemble mass through merging and gas accretion, therefore these are critical processes that must be understood across the range of galaxy masses. We can now combine observational data from wide-are surveys with state of the art cosmological simulations to study how these processes drive galaxy evolution across cosmic time. In this thesis we have used cosmological simulations (Horizon-AGN and NewHorizon) to study how physical processes shape galaxies. Firstly, we explore an unusual population of extremely massive (M��� >1011M0) spheroids, in the Horizon-AGN simulation, which exhibit anomalously low ex-situ mass fractions. This indicates that they form without recourse to significant merging, contrary to the common belief. These systems form in a single minor-merger event (with typical merger mass ratios of 0.11 - 0.33), where the satellite orbit is virtually co-planar with the disc of the massive galaxy. The merger triggers a catastrophic change in morphology, over only a few hundred Myrs, coupled with strong in-situ star formation. While this channel produces a minority (���5 per cent) of such galaxies, our study demonstrates that the formation of at least some of the most massive spheroids need not involve major mergers - or any significant merging at all - contrary to what is classically believed. We also look at how extremely massive disc galaxies form in both simulations and in the nearby Universe. We show that extremely massive (M��� > 1011.4 M0) discs are created via two channels. In the primary channel (accounting for 70% of these systems and 8% of massive galaxies) the most recent, significant merger (mass ratio > 1:10) between a massive spheroid and a gas-rich satellite ���spins up��� the spheroid by creating a new rotational stellar component, leaving a massive disc as the remnant. In the secondary channel (accounting for 30% of these systems and 3% of massive galaxies), a system maintains a disc throughout its lifetime, due to an anomalously quiet merger history. These massive discs have similar black-hole masses and accretion rates to massive spheroids, providing a natural explanation for why some powerful AGN are surprisingly found in disc galaxies. In an observational follow-up we use UV-optical and HI data of massive galaxies, from the SDSS, GALEX, DECaLS and ALFALFA surveys to test the predictions from Horizon-AGN. Observed massive discs form ���13 per cent of the population, in good agreement with the simulation (���11 per cent). ���64 per cent of massive discs exhibit tidal features indicative of recent minor mergers in the deep DECaLS images. The incidence of these features is at least four times higher than in low-mass discs, indicating that minor mergers play a significant role in the formation of these systems. The empirical star-formation rates agree well with Horizon-AGN���s predictions and, for a small galaxy sample with HI detections, the HI masses/fractions are consistent with the range predicted. The good agreement between theory and observations indicates that extremely massive discs are indeed remnants of recent minor mergers between spheroids and gas-rich satellites. We also look into the origins of dwarf low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs), which are expected to dominate the galaxy number density. Using NewHorizon, a high-resolution cosmo- logical simulation, we study the origin of LSBGs and explain why, at similar stellar mass, they exhibit a large observed spread in surface brightness. NewHorizon galaxies populate a well- defined locus in the surface brightness - stellar mass plane, with a spread of ���3 mag arcsec���2, in agreement with deep SDSS Stripe data. We find that galaxies with fainter surface brightnesses today are born in regions of higher dark-matter density. This results in faster gas accretion and more intense star formation at early epochs. The stronger resultant supernova feedback flattens gas profiles at a faster rate which, in turn, creates shallower stellar profiles (i.e. more diffuse systems) more rapidly. A small minority of dwarfs depart from the main locus towards high surface brightnesses, making them detectable in past wide surveys (e.g. standard-depth SDSS images). These systems have anomalously high star-formation rates, triggered by recent, fly-by or merger-driven starbursts. We note that objects considered extreme/anomalous at the depth of current datasets, e.g. ���ultra-diffuse galaxies���, actually dominate the predicted dwarf population and will be routinely visible in future surveys like LSST. Finally, we look at a population of galaxies that go against our current theoretical paradigm. Recent observations have found local dwarfs with extremely low dark matter content, potentially bringing the validity of the standard model into question. We use NewHorizon to demonstrate that sustained stripping of dark matter, in tidal interactions between a massive galaxy and a dwarf satellite, naturally produces dwarfs that are dark-matter-deficient. The degree of stripping is driven by the closeness of the orbit of the dwarf around its massive companion, and produces dwarfs with halo-to-stellar mass ratios consistent with the findings of recent observational studies. ���30 per cent of dwarfs show some deviation from normal dark matter fractions due to dark matter stripping, with 10 per cent showing high levels of dark matter deficiency (Mhalo/M*

Contrary to the standard lore, there is mounting observational evidence that feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) may also play a role at the low-mass end of the galaxy population. In this thesis, I explore that possibility employing both isolated and cosmological simulations of dwarf galaxies. Firstly, I perform high-resolution simulations of isolated dwarf galaxies. In these simulations, the AGN has only a limited direct effect on star formation rates. There is, however, a significant effect on outflows, which are notably enhanced by the AGN to much higher temperatures and velocities. This indicates that AGN may play an indirect role in quenching dwarf galaxies by hindering cosmic gas inflows. I further investigate this quenching scenario using the cosmological simulation suite FABLE. While in the local Universe the majority of AGN in dwarfs are much dimmer than the stellar component, for z ��� 2 there is a significant population of AGN that outshine their hosts. These high-redshift overmassive black holes contribute to the quenching of dwarfs, whereas at late cosmic times supernova (SN) feedback is more efficient. However, the lack of high-luminosity X-ray AGN in FABLE at low redshifts highlights an interesting possibility that SN feedback could be too strong in FABLE's dwarfs, curtailing AGN growth and feedback. To examine the interplay between SNe and AGN accretion in more detail, I run a series of cosmological zoom-in simulations. I find that AGN feedback in tandem with more realistic SN feedback can be a successful alternative quenching mechanism to strong SN feedback in dwarfs, provided that the AGN is able to enter the high-accretion regime for at least part of its history. However, the Bondi rate generally prevents low-mass black holes from accreting efficiently, even though sufficient amounts of gas are available in these dwarfs. Finally, I present a more robust AGN accretion model based on a unified accretion disc, which combines the ADIOS flow and standard thin disc schemes. This model will allow for the self-consistent exploration of the high-accretion regime in dwarf galaxies and detailed modelling of multimessenger signatures, in preparation for the next-generation electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observatories., STFC Studentship 1951902

The extent to which turbulence mixes gas in the face of recurrent infusions of fresh metals by supernovae (SN) could help provide important constraints on the local star formation conditions. This includes predictions of the metallicity dispersion amongst metal poor stars, which suggests that the interstellar medium was not very well mixed at these early times. The purpose of this {\it Letter} is to help isolate, via a series of numerical experiments, some of the key processes that regulate turbulent mixing of SN elements in galactic disks. We study the gas interactions in small simulated patches of a galaxy disk with the goal of resolving the small-scale mixing effects of metals at pc scales, which enables us to measure the turbulent diffusion coefficient in various galaxy environments. By investigating the statistics of variations of $\alpha$ elements in these simulations, we are able to derive constraints not only on the allowed range of intrinsic yield variations in SN explosions but also on the star formation history of the Milky Way. We argue that the observed dispersion of [Mg/Fe] in metal poor halo stars is compatible with the star-forming conditions expected in dwarf satellites or in an early low star-forming Milky Way progenitor. In particular, metal variations in stars that have not been phase-mixed can be used to infer the star-forming conditions of disrupted dwarf satellites., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJL

We report on a superdense star-forming region with an effective radius (R_e) smaller than 13 pc identified at z=6.143 and showing a star-formation rate density \Sigma_SFR~1000 Msun/yr/kpc2 (or conservatively >300 Msun/yr/kpc2). Such a dense region is detected with S/N>40 hosted by a dwarf extending over 440 pc, dubbed D1 (Vanzella et al. 2017b). D1 is magnified by a factor 17.4+/-5.0 behind the Hubble Frontier Field galaxy cluster MACS~J0416 and elongated tangentially by a factor 13.2+/-4.0 (including the systematic errors). The lens model accurately reproduces the positions of the confirmed multiple images with a r.m.s. of 0.35", and the tangential stretch is well depicted by a giant multiply-imaged Lya arc. D1 is part of an interacting star-forming complex extending over 800 pc. The SED-fitting, the very blue ultraviolet slope (\beta ~ -2.5, F(\lambda) ~ \lambda^\beta) and the prominent Lya emission of the stellar complex imply that very young (< 10-100 Myr), moderately dust-attenuated (E(B-V), Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, MNRAS accepted

The population of Milky Way satellite galaxies is of great interest for cosmology, fundamental physics, and astrophysics. They represent the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function, are the most dark-matter dominated objects in the local Universe, and contain the oldest and most metal-poor stellar populations. Recent surveys have revealed around 60 satellites, but this could represent less than half of the total. Characterization of these systems remains a challenge due to their low luminosity. We consider the gravitational wave observatory LISA as a potential tool for studying these satellites through observations of their short-period double white dwarf populations. LISA will observe the entire sky without selection effects due to dust extinction, complementing optical surveys, and could potentially discover massive satellites hidden behind the disk of the galaxy., 7 pages, 2 figures

Nadler, Ethan O, et al. DES Collaboration, We perform a comprehensive study of Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxies to constrain the fundamental properties of dark matter (DM). This analysis fully incorporates inhomogeneities in the spatial distribution and detectability of MW satellites and marginalizes over uncertainties in the mapping between galaxies and DM halos, the properties of the MW system, and the disruption of subhalos by the MW disk. Our results are consistent with the cold, collisionless DM paradigm and yield the strongest cosmological constraints to date on particle models of warm, interacting, and fuzzy dark matter. At 95% confidence, we report limits on (i) the mass of thermal relic warm DM, mWDM>6.5 keV (free-streaming length, λfs≲10h-1 kpc), (ii) the velocity-independent DM-proton scattering cross section, σ02.9×10-21 eV (de Broglie wavelength, λdB≲0.5 kpc). These constraints are complementary to other observational and laboratory constraints on DM properties., The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under Grants No. ESP2017-89838, No. PGC2018-094773, No. PGC2018-102021, No. SEV-2016-0588, No. SEV-2016-0597, and No. MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. I. F. A. E. is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC Grant Agreements No. 240672, No. 291329, and No. 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq Grant No. 465376/2014-2). This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics.

We constrain the rest-UV size-luminosity relation for star-forming galaxies at z~4 and z~6, 7, and 8 identified behind clusters from the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) program. The size-luminosity relation is key to deriving accurate luminosity functions (LF) for faint galaxies. Making use of the latest lensing models and full data set for these clusters, lensing-corrected sizes and luminosities are derived for 68 z~4, 184 z~6, 93 z~7, and 53 z~8 galaxies. We show that size measurements can be reliably measured up to linear magnifications of 30x, where the lensing models are well calibrated. The sizes we measure span a >1-dex range, from ~500 pc. Uncertainties are based on both the formal fit errors and systematic differences between the public lensing models. These uncertainties range from ~20 pc for the smallest sources to 50 pc for the largest. Using a forward-modeling procedure to model the impact of incompleteness and magnification uncertainties, we characterize the size-luminosity relation at both z~4 and z~6-8. We find that the source sizes of star-forming galaxies at z~4 and z~6-8 scale with luminosity L as L^{0.54\pm0.08} and L^{0.40+/-0.04}, respectively, such that lower luminosity (>~-18 mag) galaxies are smaller than expected from extrapolating the size-luminosity relation at high luminosities (, Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication into ApJ. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1711.02090

Dwarf early-type galaxies (ETGs) display a rich diversity in their photometric, structural, and dynamical properties. In this work, we address their structural complexity by studying with deep imaging a sample of nine dwarf ETGs from the Virgo galaxy cluster, characterized by having faint disk features, such as bars and spiral arms, which lie mostly hidden within the bright diffuse light of the galaxies. We present a new, robust method that aims to identify and extract the disk substructure embedded in these dwarf ETGs. The method consists in an iterative procedure that gradually separates a galaxy image into two components; the bright, dominant diffuse component, and the much fainter, underlying disk component. By applying it to the dwarf ETG sample, we quantify their disk substructure and find that its relative contribution to the total galaxy light ranges between 2.2 to 6.4% within two effective radii. We test the reliability of the method, and prove that it is accurate in recovering the disk substructure we introduce in mock galaxy images, even at low disk-to-total light fractions of a few percent. As a potential application of the method, we perform a Fourier analysis on the extracted disk substructures and measure the orientation, length, and strength of the bars, and the pitch angle and strength of the spiral arms. We also briefly discuss a scenario based on the numerical simulations presented in our companion paper, Brought to Light II: Smith et al. 2021, in which we investigate the origins of the substructure in such dwarf systems., Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables. Accepted to AJ. Companion paper: Brought to Light II (Smith et al. 2021) accepted to ApJ, also listed on arXiv today (1st of April, 2021)

We present deep $g$- and $r$-band Magellan/Megacam photometry of two dwarf galaxy candidates discovered in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), Grus I and Indus II (DES J2038-4609). For the case of Grus I, we resolved the main sequence turn-off (MSTO) and $\sim 2$ mags below it. The MSTO can be seen at $g_0\sim 24$ with a photometric uncertainty of $0.03$ mag. We show Grus I to be consistent with an old, metal-poor ($\sim 13.3$ Gyr, [Fe/H]$\sim-1.9$) dwarf galaxy. We derive updated distance and structural parameters for Grus I using this deep, uniform, wide-field data set. We find an azimuthally averaged half-light radius more than two times larger ($\sim 151^{+21}_{-31}$ pc; $\sim 4.^{\prime} 16^{+0.54}_{-0.74}$) and an absolute $V$-band magnitude $\sim-4.1$ that is $\sim 1$ magnitude brighter than previous studies. We obtain updated distance, ellipticity, and centroid parameters which are in agreement with other studies within uncertainties. Although our photometry of Indus II is $\sim 2-3$ magnitudes deeper than the DES Y1 Public release, we find no coherent stellar population at its reported location. The original detection was located in an incomplete region of sky in the DES Y2Q1 data set and was flagged due to potential blue horizontal branch member stars. The best fit isochrone parameters are physically inconsistent with both dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. We conclude that Indus II is likely a false-positive, flagged due to a chance alignment of stars along the line of sight., 16 pages, 8 figures; submitted to ApJ

The population of massive black holes (MBHs) in dwarf galaxies is elusive, but fundamentally important to understand the coevolution of black holes with their hosts and the formation of the first collapsed objects in the Universe. While some progress was made in determining the X-ray detected fraction of MBHs in dwarfs, with typical values ranging from $0\%$ to $6\%$, their overall active fraction, ${\cal A}$, is still largely unconstrained. Here, we develop a theoretical model to predict the multiwavelength active fraction of MBHs in dwarf galaxies starting from first principles and based on the physical properties of the host, namely, its stellar mass and angular momentum content. We find multiwavelength active fractions for MBHs, accreting at typically low rates, ranging from $5\%$ to $22\%$, and increasing with the stellar mass of the host as ${\cal A} \sim(\log_{10}M_{\star})^{4.5}$. If dwarfs are characterized by low-metallicity environments, the active fraction may reach $\sim 30\%$ for the most massive hosts. For galaxies with stellar mass in the range $10^7, Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. This is the final version of the manuscript. 16 pages, 6 figures

We present the first results of an MMT/Hectospec campaign to measure the kinematics of globular clusters (GCs) around M49 -- the brightest galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster, which dominates the Virgo B subcluster. The data include kinematic tracers beyond 95 kpc (~5.2 effective radii) for M49 for the first time, enabling us to achieve three key insights reported here. First, beyond ~20'-30' (~100-150 kpc), the GC kinematics sampled along the minor photometric axis of M49 become increasingly hotter, indicating a transition from GCs related to M49 to those representing the Virgo B intra-cluster medium. Second, there is an anomaly in the line-of-sight radial velocity dispersion ($\sigma_{r,los}$) profile in an annulus ~10-15' (~50-90 kpc) from M49 in which the kinematics cool by $\Delta \sigma_{r,los}~150$ km s$^{-1}$ relative to those in- or outward. The kinematic fingerprint of a previous accretion event is hinted at in projected phase-space, and we isolate GCs that both give rise to this feature, and are spatially co-located with two prominent stellar shells in the halo of M49. Third, we find a subsample of GCs with velocities representative of the dwarf galaxy VCC1249 that is currently interacting with M49. The spatial distribution of these GCs closely resembles the morphology of VCC1249's isophotes, indicating that several of these GCs are likely in the act of being stripped from the dwarf during its passage through M49's halo. Taken together, these results point toward the opportunity of witnessing on-going giant halo assembly in the depths of a cluster environment., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Full list of authors: Nidever, David L.; Olsen, Knut; Choi, Yumi; Ruiz-Lara, Tomas; Miller, Amy E.; Johnson, L. Clifton; Bell, Cameron P. M.; Blum, Robert D.; Cioni, Maria-Rosa L.; Gallart, Carme; Majewski, Steven R.; Martin, Nicolas F.; Massana, Pol; Monachesi, Antonela; Noël, Noelia E. D.; Sakowska, Joanna D.; van der Marel, Roeland P.; Walker, Alistair R.; Zaritsky, Dennis; Bell, Eric F. Conn, Blair C.; de Boer, Thomas J. L.; Gruendl, Robert A.; Monelli, Matteo; Muñoz, Ricardo R.; Saha, Abhijit; Vivas, A. Katherina; Bernard, Edouard; Besla, Gurtina; Carballo-Bello, Julio A.; Dorta, Antonio; Martinez-Delgado, David; Goater, Alex; Rusakov, Vadim; Stringfellow, Guy S., We present an analysis of the ionosphere and thermosphere response to Solar Proton Events (SPE) and magnetospheric proton precipitation in January 2005, which was carried out using the model of the entire atmosphere EAGLE. The ionization rates for the considered period were acquired from the AIMOS (Atmospheric Ionization Module Osnabrück) dataset. For numerical experiments, we applied only the proton-induced ionization rates of that period, while all the other model input parameters, including the electron precipitations, corresponded to the quiet conditions. In January 2005, two major solar proton events with different energy spectra and proton fluxes occurred on January 17 and January 20. Since two geomagnetic storms and several sub-storms took place during the considered period, not only solar protons but also less energetic magnetospheric protons contributed to the calculated ionization rates. Despite the relative transparency of the thermosphere for high-energy protons, an ionospheric response to the SPE and proton precipitation from the magnetotail was obtained in numerical experiments. In the ionospheric E layer, the maximum increase in the electron concentration is localized at high latitudes, and at heights of the ionospheric F2 layer, the positive perturbations were formed in the near-equatorial region. An analysis of the model-derived results showed that changes in the ionospheric F2 layer were caused by a change in the neutral composition of the thermosphere. We found that in the recovery phase after both solar proton events and the enhancement of magnetospheric proton precipitations associated with geomagnetic disturbances, the TEC and electron density in the F region and in topside ionosphere/plasmasphere increase at low- and mid-latitudes due to an enhancement of atomic oxygen concentration. Our results demonstrate an important role of magnetospheric protons in the formation of negative F-region ionospheric storms. According to our results, the topside ionosphere/plasmasphere and bottom-side ionosphere can react to solar and magnetospheric protons both with the same sign of disturbances or in different way. The same statement is true for TEC and foF2 disturbances. Different disturbances of foF2 and TEC at high and low latitudes can be explained by topside electron temperature disturbances. © 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved, Y.C., E.F.B., and A.M. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST 1655677. A.D., C.G., T.R.L., and M.M. acknowledge support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the grants AYA2014-56795-P and AYA2017-89076-P as well as AYA2016-77237-C3-1-P. T.R.L. has support from a Spinoza grant (NWO) awarded to A. Helmi and acknowledges support by an MCIU Juan de la CiervaFormacion grant (FJCI-2016-30342). C.P.M.B. and M.-R.L.C. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 682115). A.M. acknowledges support from FONDECYT Regular 1181797. R. R.M. acknowledges partial support from project BASAL AFB170002 as well as FONDECYT project No. 1170364. D.M.D. acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). Image processing: Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani, and Davide de Martin. Based on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOAO Prop. ID: 2013A-0411 and 2013B-0440; PI: D. L. Nidever), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This project used data obtained with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was constructed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico and the Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, the Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, and Texas A&M University. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gai a (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC,.https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium).Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

The core-cusp problem persists as an unresolved tension between the pre- dictions of Lambda CDM cosmology and observations of dark matter (DM) profiles in dwarf spheroidal and other galaxies. We present a novel scenario for converting cusps into cores through reactivation of DM annihilation in galaxies at late times. This can happen in asymmetric DM models when there is a very small DM-number violating mass term that causes oscillations between DM and its antiparticle. Using analytic methods as well as gravitational N-body simulations, we show that this mechanism can robustly eliminate cusps from galactic DM profiles for light fermionic DM of mass m(chi) similar to (0.1 - 1) GeV and a lighter mediator into which the DM can annihilate. We identify regions of parameter space where annihilation of DM particles is more efficient than elastic scattering at reducing the inner density of the DM profile. Dark matter annihilation is therefore a qualitatively distinct alternative to the mechanism of elastic self-interacting dark matter for addressing the cusp-core problem Aberto

Extreme emission-line galaxies (EELGs) at redshift z=1-2 provide a unique view of metal-poor, starburst sources that are the likely drivers of the cosmic reionization at z$\geq6$. However, the molecular gas reservoirs of EELGs - the fuel for their intense star-formation - remain beyond the reach of current facilities. We present ALMA [CII] and PdBI CO(2-1) observations of a z=1.8, strongly lensed EELG SL2S 0217, a bright Lyman-$\alpha$ emitter with a metallicity 0.05 $Z_\odot$. We obtain a tentative (3-4$\sigma$) detection of the [CII] line and set an upper limit on the [CII]/SFR ratio of $\leq1\times10^6$ $L_\odot$/($M_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$), based on the synthesized images and visibility-plane analysis. The CO(2-1) emission is not detected. Photoionization modelling indicates that up to 80% of the [CII] emission originates from neutral or molecular gas, although we can not rule out that the gas is fully ionized. The very faint [CII] emission is in line with both nearby metal-poor dwarfs and high-redshift Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters, and predictions from hydrodynamical simulations. However, the [CII] line is 30$\times$ fainter than predicted by the De Looze et al. [CII]-SFR relation for local dwarfs, illustrating the danger of extrapolating locally-calibrated relations to high-redshift, metal-poor galaxies., Comment: Corrected to match the published version. We thank Y. Harikane and I. Smail for their comments on the previous arXiv version

We present a study of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) in the Virgo Cluster based on deep imaging from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS). Applying a new definition for the UDG class based on galaxy scaling relations, we define samples of 44 and 26 UDGs using expansive and restrictive selection criteria, respectively. Our UDG sample includes objects that are significantly fainter than previously known UDGs: i.e., more than half are fainter than $\langle\mu\rangle_e \sim27.5$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$. The UDGs in Virgo's core region show some evidence for being structurally distinct from "normal" dwarf galaxies, but this separation disappears when considering the full sample of galaxies throughout the cluster. UDGs are more centrally concentrated in their spatial distribution than other Virgo galaxies of similar luminosity, while their morphologies demonstrate that at least some UDGs owe their diffuse nature to physical processes---such as tidal interactions or low-mass mergers---that are at play within the cluster environment. The globular cluster (GC) systems of Virgo UDGs have a wide range in specific frequency ($S_N$), with a higher mean $S_N$ than "normal" Virgo dwarfs, but a lower mean $S_N$ than Coma UDGs at fixed luminosity. Their GCs are predominantly blue, with a small contribution from red clusters in the more massive UDGs. The combined GC luminosity function is consistent with those observed in dwarf galaxies, showing no evidence of being anomalously luminous. The diversity in their morphologies and their GC properties suggests no single process has given rise to all objects within the UDG class. Based on the available evidence, we conclude that UDGs are simply those systems that occupy the extended tails of the galaxy size and surface brightness distributions., Comment: 31 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

The MATLAS deep imaging survey has uncovered a plethora of dwarf galaxies in the low density environment it has mapped. A fraction of them are unusually extended and have a low-surface brightness. Among these so-called ultra-diffuse galaxies, a few seem to host an excess of globular clusters. With the integral-field unit spectrograph MUSE we have observed one of these galaxies - MATLAS J15052031+0148447 (MATLAS-2019) - located towards the nearby group NGC 5846 and measured its systemic velocity,age, and metallicity, and that of its globular clusters candidates. For the stellar body of MATLAS-2019 we derive a metallicity of -1.33+0.19-0.01 dex and an age of 11.2+1.8-0.8 Gyr. For some of the individual GCs and the stacked GC population, we derive consistent ages and metallicities. From the 11 confirmed globular clusters and using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach we derived a dynamical mass-to-light ratio of 4.2+8.6-3.4M/L. This is at the lower end of the luminosity-mass scaling relation defined by the Local Group dwarf galaxies. Furthermore, we couldn't confirm nor reject the possibility of a rotational component of the GC system. If present, this would further modify the inferred mass. Follow-up observations of the globular cluster population and of the stellar body of the galaxy are needed to assess whether this galaxy is lacking dark matter like it was suggested for the pair of dwarf galaxies in the field of NGC 1052, or if this is a miss-interpretation arising from systematic uncertainties of the method commonly used for these systems and the large uncertainties of the individual globular cluster velocities., 10 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in A&A

We present an extension of our previous research on the early-type galaxy population of the Antlia cluster (d ~ 35 Mpc), achieving a total coverage of ~ 2.6 deg x deg and performing surface photometry for ~300 galaxies, 130 of which are new uncatalogued ones. Such new galaxies mainly fall in the low surface brightness (LSB) regime, but there are also some lenticulars (S0) which support the existence of unique functions that connect bright and dwarf galaxies in the scaling relations. We analyse the projected spatial distribution of galaxies up to a distance of ~800 kpc from NGC 3268, the adopted centre, as well as the radial velocity distribution and the correlation between galaxy colour and effective radius with the projected spatial distribution. We also obtain the luminosity function of the early-type galaxies and the distribution of stellar masses using the T1-band magnitudes and adopted mass-luminosity ratios. Additionally, we correlate the central galaxy distribution with an X-ray emission map from the literature. Based on the analysis of the radial velocities and galaxy colour distributions, we find that galaxies redder than the colour-magnitude relation (CMR) have a velocity distribution strongly concentrated towards the values of the dominant galaxies and are homogeneously distributed throughout the cluster. Those bluer than the CMR, in turn, have a much more extended radial velocity distribution and are concentrated towards the centre of the cluster. We also identify 12 candidates to ultra diffuse galaxies (UDG), that seem to be split into two families, and speculate about their origins in the context of the cluster structure., Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

We measure the ionizing photon production efficiency ($\xi_{ion}$) of low-mass galaxies ($10^{7.8}$-$10^{9.8}$ $M_{\odot}$) at $1.4, Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, Accepted in ApJ

Reproducing the observed quenched fraction of satellite galaxies has been a long-standing issue for galaxy formation models. We modify the treatment of environmental effects in our state-of-the-art GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) semi-analytic model to improve our modelling of satellite galaxies. Specifically, we implement gradual stripping of hot gas, ram-pressure stripping of cold gas, and an updated algorithm to account for angular momentum exchanges between the gaseous and stellar disc components of model galaxies. Our updated model is in good agreement with the observed quenched fractions for central and satellite galaxies, and their dependencies on stellar mass and halo mass. We also find consistency between model predictions and observational estimates of quenching time for satellite galaxies; HI, H$_2$ fractions of central galaxies; and deficiencies of HI, H$_2$, SFR of galaxies in cluster haloes. Analysing results from our updated model, we find that the dominant quenching mechanisms are hot-gas stripping for low-mass galaxies, and AGN feedback for massive galaxies. The Ram-pressure stripping of cold gas has a limited impact on the predicted quenched fractions, nonetheless, is needed to reproduce the observed HI deficiencies., Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures; accepted for publication in MNRAS

We report on small-amplitude optical variability and recent dissipation of the unusually persistent broad emission lines in the blue compact dwarf galaxy PHL 293B. The galaxy's unusual spectral features (P Cygni-like profiles with ~800 km s−1 blueshifted absorption lines) have resulted in conflicting interpretations of the nature of this source in the literature. However, analysis of new Gemini spectroscopy reveals the broad emission has begun to fade after being persistent for over a decade prior. Precise difference imaging light curves constructed with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Survey reveal small-amplitude optical variability of ~0.1 mag in the g band offset by 100 ± 21 pc from the brightest pixel of the host. The light curve is well-described by an active galactic nuclei (AGN)-like damped random walk process. However, we conclude that the origin of the optical variability and spectral features of PHL 293B is due to a long-lived stellar transient, likely a Type IIn supernova or nonterminal outburst, mimicking long-term AGN-like variability. This work highlights the challenges of discriminating between scenarios in such extreme environments, relevant to searches for AGNs in dwarf galaxies. This is the second long-lived transient discovered in a blue compact dwarf, after SDSS1133. Our result implies such long-lived stellar transients may be more common in metal-deficient galaxies. Systematic searches for low-level variability in dwarf galaxies will be possible with the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

It has long been speculated that many starburst or compact dwarf galaxies are resulted from dwarf-dwarf galaxy merging, but unequivocal evidence for this possibility has rarely been reported in the literature. We present the first study of deep optical broadband images of a gas-dominated blue compact dwarf galaxy (BCD) VCC848 (Mstar=2e8Msun) which hosts extended stellar shells and thus is confirmed to be a dwarf-dwarf merger. VCC848 is located in the outskirts of the Virgo Cluster. By analyzing the stellar light distribution, we found that VCC848 is the result of a merging between two dwarf galaxies with a primary-to-secondary mass ratio < ~ 5 for the stellar components and < ~ 2 for the presumed dark matter halos. The secondary progenitor galaxy has been almost entirely disrupted. The age-mass distribution of photometrically selected star cluster candidates in VCC848 implies that the cluster formation rate (CFR, proportional to star formation rate) was enhanced by a factor of ~ 7 - 10 during the past 1 Gyr. The merging-induced enhancement of CFR peaked near the galactic center a few hundred Myr ago and has started declining in the last few tens of Myr. The current star formation activities, as traced by the youngest clusters, mainly occur at large galactocentric distances (> ~ 1 kpc). The fact that VCC848 is still (atomic) gas-dominated after the period of most violent collision suggests that gas-rich dwarf galaxy merging can result in BCD-like remnants with extended atomic gas distribution surrounding a blue compact center, in general agreement with previous numerical simulations., 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJL

The magnifications of compact-source lenses are extremely sensitive to the presence of low mass dark matter halos along the entire sight line from the source to the observer. Traditionally, the study of dark matter structure in compact-source strong gravitational lenses has been limited to radio-loud systems, as the radio emission is extended and thus unaffected by microlensing which can mimic the signal of dark matter structure. An alternate approach is to measure quasar nuclear-narrow line emission, which is free from microlensing and present in virtually all quasar lenses. In this paper, we double the number of systems which can be used for gravitational lensing analyses by presenting measurements of narrow-line emission from a sample of 8 quadruply imaged quasar lens systems, WGD J0405-3308, HS 0810+2554, RX J0911+0551, SDSS J1330+1810, PS J1606-2333, WFI 2026-4536, WFI 2033-4723 and WGD J2038-4008. We describe our updated grism spectral modelling pipeline, which we use to measure narrow-line fluxes with uncertainties of 2-10\%, presented here. We fit the lensed image positions with smooth mass models and demonstrate that these models fail to produce the observed distribution of image fluxes over the entire sample of lenses. Furthermore, typical deviations are larger than those expected from macromodel uncertainties. This discrepancy indicates the presence of perturbations caused by small-scale dark matter structure. The interpretation of this result in terms of dark matter models is presented in a companion paper., Accepted for publication in MNRAS

A new family of equilibrium configurations for galactic halos is introduced, taking into account the possibility to identify strange particles conglomerates with masses larger than 8 GeV as components of the dark matter. This possibility may have important consequences on the formation of massive particles during the Big Bang in the framework of the Standard Model. The obtained results are in agreement with the values in mass and radius requested to be consistent with the rotational velocity curve observed in our Galaxy. In addition, the average density of such strange dark matter halos is similar to one for halos of dwarf spheroidal galaxies, suggesting a common origin of the two families of cosmic structures.

The cold dark matter model successfully explains both the emergence and evolution of cosmic structures on large scales and, when we include a cosmological constant, the properties of the homogeneous and isotropic Universe. However, the cold dark matter model faces persistent challenges on the scales of galaxies. {Indeed,} N-body simulations predict some galaxy properties that are at odds with the observations. These discrepancies are primarily related to the dark matter distribution in the innermost regions of the halos of galaxies and to the dynamical properties of dwarf galaxies. They may have three different origins: (1) the baryonic physics affecting galaxy formation is still poorly understood and it is thus not properly included in the model; (2) the actual properties of dark matter differs from those of the conventional cold dark matter; (3) the theory of gravity departs from General Relativity. Solving these discrepancies is a rapidly evolving research field. We illustrate some of the solutions proposed} within the cold dark matter model, and solutions when including warm dark matter, self-interacting dark matter, axion-like particles, or fuzzy dark matter. { We also illustrate some modifications of the theory of gravity: Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), MOdified Gravity (MOG), and $f(R)$ gravity., Comment: 70 pages; 27 Figures; Invited Review accepted for publication on Universe. Special Issue "Theories of Gravity: Alternatives to the Cosmological and Particle Standard Models"

We present a detailed abundance analysis of the three brightest member stars at the top of the giant branch of the ultrafaint dwarf (UFD) galaxy Grus II. All stars exhibit a higher than expected [Mg/Ca] ratio compared to metal-poor stars in other UFD galaxies and in the Milky Way (MW) halo. Nucleosynthesis in high-mass (20 M o) core-collapse supernovae has been shown to create this signature. The abundances of this small sample (three) stars suggests the chemical enrichment of Grus II could have occurred through substantial high-mass stellar evolution, and is consistent with the framework of a top-heavy initial mass function. However, with only three stars it cannot be ruled out that the abundance pattern is the result of a stochastic chemical enrichment at early times in the galaxy. The most metal-rich of the three stars also possesses a small enhancement in rapid neutron-capture (r-process) elements. The abundance pattern of the r-process elements in this star matches the scaled r-process pattern of the solar system and r-process enhanced stars in other dwarf galaxies and in the MW halo, hinting at a common origin for these elements across a range of environments. All current proposed astrophysical sites of r-process element production are associated with high-mass stars, thus the possible top-heavy initial mass function of Grus II would increase the likelihood of any of these events occurring. The time delay between the and r-process element enrichment of the galaxy favors a neutron star merger as the origin of the r-process elements in Grus II., Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The collaborating institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. I.F.A.E. is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007- 2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). T.T.H and J.D.S acknowledge support from NSF grant AST1714873. T.S.L. is supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51439.001, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics.

The physics pertaining to the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase of stellar evolution has been studied for many years. However, the mechanics behind many characteristics displayed at this stage are still not fully understood. As a member of the Long Period Variable class of stars, AGB stars are invaluable in creating three-dimensional maps of the Milky Way, the Magellanic System and other galaxies with resolved stellar populations. Variable stars can be used to determine radial distances from Earth using their periodic luminosity variations. As this type of star has unknown qualities, models of AGB populations need to be calibrated with observed data. Previous research has derived a best-fitting model using the TRILEGAL code (a TRIdimensional modeL of thE GALaxy). This model was calibrated against single-epoch luminosity functions (LFs) calculated from resolved stellar populations in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). With multi-epoch data now available from the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds (VMC), this best-fitting model can now be compared with the LFs as they vary with time. Firstly, statistical tests are completed to measure the extent of the LF variation between epochs and from the mean LF for both the full VMC AGB catalogue and for the oxygen-rich, carbon-rich and extreme AGB classes. Statistical tests are then performed to measure the similarity between the LFs from different epochs and the simulated LFs, again for the entire sample and the three classes. This investigation shows that, while the current best-fitting model is a good approximation of many individual epochs’ AGB LFs in the SMC to within 3σ, inclusion of multi-epoch data would make for a more robust analysis. In order to do this, it would be desirable to have more epochs with deeper and regular observations that could cover full lightcurves of some of the sources. There also seems to be a statistical difference between the inner and outer areas of the SMC, perhaps due to tidal disruptions. It would be interesting to see the results of a similar study using the LMC, which is less affected by the gravitational influence of its smaller companion. This thesis was written under the supervision of Maria-Rosa Cioni at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam. The presentation was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We present Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of three recently discovered ultra-faint Milky Way satellites, Grus II, Tucana IV, and Tucana V. We measure systemic velocities of vhel=-110.0 ± 0.5 kms, vhel= 15.9 kms and vhel=-36.2 kms for the three objects, respectively. Their large relative velocities demonstrate that the satellites are unrelated despite their close physical proximity. We determine a velocity dispersion for Tuc IV of σ = 4.3 km s but we cannot resolve the velocity dispersions of the other two systems. For Gru II, we place an upper limit (90% confidence) on the dispersion of σ < 1.9 kms and for Tuc V, we do not obtain any useful limits. All three satellites have metallicities below, but none has a detectable metallicity spread. We determine proper motions for each satellite based on Gaia astrometry and compute their orbits around the Milky Way. Gru II is on a tightly bound orbit with a pericenter of 25 kpc and orbital eccentricity of 0.45 . Tuc V likely has an apocenter beyond 100 kpc and could be approaching the Milky Way for the first time. The current orbit of Tuc IV is similar to that of Gru II, with a pericenter of 25 kpc and an eccentricity of 0.36 . However, a backward integration of the position of Tuc IV demonstrates that it collided with the Large Magellanic Cloud at an impact parameter of 4 kpc ∼120 Myr ago, deflecting its trajectory and possibly altering its internal kinematics. Based on their sizes, masses, and metallicities, we classify Gru II and Tuc IV as likely dwarf galaxies, but the nature of Tuc V remains uncertain., This publication is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1714873. J.D.S. was also partially supported by program number HST-GO14734, provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Some of this work was carried out during a stay at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant No. NSF PHY-1748958, for the program The Small-Scale Structure of Cold(?) Dark Matter. T.S.L. was supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51439.001 awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. We thank Dan Kelson for many helpful conversations regarding IMACS data reduction and Petchara Pattarakijwanich for early contributions to the IMACS reduction procedures, as well as the anonymous referee for comments that helped improve the paper. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. Contour plots were generated using corner.py (Foreman-Mackey 2016). Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2012- 39559, ESP2013-48274, FPA2013-47986, and Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0234, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. 1138766. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, and Texas A& M University.