Lucas Hunt

Date of Graduation

2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Committee Chair

Daniel J Pisano

Committee Co-Chair

Loren Anderson

Committee Member

John Jones

Committee Member

Sean McWilliams

Abstract

Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies (LCBGs) are bright, compact star forming galaxies that are common in the distant universe, but rare locally. In this thesis we have conducted studies tracing changes in the LCBG population between z = 0.0--1.0 in the COSMOS survey region. We used the luminosity function to show LCBG's contribution to the luminosity density is increasing between z = 0.0--1.0. From this we also find the number density of LCBGs is increasing by an order of magnitude from z = 0.0--1.0. Finally we show that 10% of galaxies brighter than MB = --18.5 are LCBGs at z ~ 0.1 but ~62% are LCBGs at z ~ 0.9 indicating LCBGs are a significant population of bright star forming galaxies at high redshift. In the second study we use the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES) and CHILES Con Pol to trace star formation rate and HI in LCBGs to higher redshift. We determine the HI mass and distribution of two LCBGs in CHILES. We find the average star formation rate of LCBGs increases between z = 0.0--1.0 from 2 solar masses per year to 53 solar masses per year. Finally, we set upper limits on the evolution of the average HI mass in LCBGs between z = 0.0--0.45, which range from (2.3--5.6)x109 solar masses. In the last study we report on the first observations of HI in gravitationally lensed galaxies behind the galaxy cluster Abell 773. We find the upper limit for the average HI mass in the lensed galaxies at z = 0.398 to be 6.58 x 10 9 solar masses and the upper limit for the HI mass of the galaxy at z = 0.487 to be 1.5 x 1010 solar masses. We use an automated flagging routine to remove RFI which reduces the noise in the spectrum by ~25% when compared to spectrum in which we discarded integrations with RFI.

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