Stellar mass And GAlaxy CEnsus

in the first two billion year of the Universe

SAGACE is a project funded by the ANR (Agence Nationale de Recherche) to study the galaxy formation and evolution in the first two billion year of the Universe. This project aims to measure at which rate massive galaxies assembled their stellar populations in the primodial Universe, i.e. by catching galaxies which were only 500 millions years old (z~6-8) and looking at their evolution over the following two billions years (out to z>2-3). We propose to build a new sample of 1 million galaxies over 2 deg2, detected with our ongoing SPLASH program (1700h of observations with the IRAC camera onboard of Spitzer). IRAC is the only instrument which can provide robust stellar masses at z>3. Our project will provide: 1) a sample of one hundred massive galaxies at z>6 to study the primordial Universe; 2) the most accurate stellar mass census at 3<z<6, allowing a complementary and independent view of the global star formation history in the first 2 billion years of galaxy evolution; 3) a better knowledge of the physical processes which regulate the star formation using semi-analytical models. This project started in September 2014 for a duration of three years.

participants: Stephane Arnouts, Jérémy Blaizot, Andrea Cattaneo, Jean-Gabriel Cuby, Iary Davidzon, Clotilde Laigle, Henry McCracken, Olivier Le Fèvre, Lidia Tasca, romain Thomas, Laurence Tresse, Pin-Wei Wang