Galaxy evolution in the near and far Universe

Galaxies, the building blocks of the Universe, are formed by the dissipational infall of gas into the center of dark matter haloes. They are literally where gas becomes stars. Several processes drive their evolution : gas accretion, radiative cooling, shock heating, star formation, feed-back from star formation and black hole accretion, mergers, secular disc instabilities and environmental effects (tides, ram-pressure, strangulation, harassment). Researchers in our team study at the fore-front of theoretical and observational investigations of this topic, with a multiplicity of approaches (semi-analytical modeling, numerical simulations, phenomenological modeling, imaging, integral-field spectroscopy) and instruments (e.g. JWST, VLT, SITELLE, IRAM, ALMA, LOFAR, Condor and Euclid) from nearby individual objects (e.g. M31, M101) to large catalogues, either observed (e.g. SDSS, MaNGA) or simulated (e.g. IllustrisTNG).

Key questions are : which processes are responsible for the lack of star formation in the passive galaxy population at high and low masses and the low efficiency of star formation in low surface brightness galaxies ? How black hole growth in galaxy nuclei can occur in synergy with bulge growth ? How does feedback (winds, black hole heating) regulate star formation and the stellar masses of galaxies ? What has driven the morphological evolution of galaxies across the Hubble time ? How does the model of dark matter affect the dynamics of galaxies ? What is the nature and origin of the diffuse components in galaxies (faint ionised gas, extended stellar populations), in clusters of galaxies (intracluster light) and the extragalactic background radiation ?