Galaxies are a complex mix of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter, distributed in the bulge, disk, and halo. The present day structure and dynamics of these galaxy sub-components are intimately linked to their assembly and evolution over the age of the Universe. This project aims to establish observational constraints to models of galaxy formation and evolution, by resolving in time and space the properties of the stellar populations of galaxies in the local Universe. This project is an extension of our AyA2014 in terms of specific science objectives, techniques, and data, now including CALIFA+ and MaNGA samples. Furthermore, this project proposes to tend a bridge between Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) and multi-band cosmological surveys building new tools for the analysis of 2D photo-spectra from JPAS and JPLUS. These new developments guarantee the future explotation of these panoramic surveys for galaxy evolution studies, providing a 3D view of the Universe up to redshift ~1. We use the fossil record that the stellar populations imprint on their galaxy spectra (and photo-spectra) to retrieve when and where the mass and metals were assembled as a function of look-back time and of redshift. The scientific objectives are geared to understand: 1) the growth of spheroids and disks; 2) the cosmic evolution of the star formation in galaxies; 3) the quenching of the star formation in galaxies.
The project uses IFS data from the CALIFA+ survey, designed to make a rational and efficient use of the singular and unique facility of the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto observatory. Further, we use JPLUS/JPAS muti-band data from the telescopes in the ICTS Javalambre observatory. The IFS data are complemented with 3D data cubes from the MaNGA first public release. This will allow to extend our CALIFA+ sample covering a large homogeous set of galaxies of all the morphological types and range of galaxy mass. Furthermore, it will expand the galaxy sample in common between IFS and JPAS/PLUS during the first years of observations of these surveys. These IFS re-calibrated data will be essential to build a set of galaxy templates that will be used to “measure” emission line fluxes in the JPAS photo-spectra, and extract the spatially resolved stellar population properties, to empower this survey as a 3D galaxy evolution cosmological machine. These data sets provide the legacy of an important database that together with our analysis allow us to get 2D spatial and temporal maps of the star formation history and metallicity enrichment of galaxies along the Hubble sequence, and global galaxy properties.
Our group forms a consolidated team leading most of the stellar population studies in CALIFA. We have already developed many of the computational tools for the IFS (CALIFA+ and MaNGA) analysis, thanks to a long and tight collaboration between Brasil and Granada, with interchange of PhD young researchers, and months of working visits of the senior scientists between the two countries. We also belong to the JPAS/JPLUS collaboration from the beginning. Our experience with IFS studies place us in a very good position to develop useful tools for the explotation of JPAS/JPLUS as an IFS-like machine. The interaction with other Spanish and Brazillian groups within the JPAS galaxy evolution working team will ensure the success of this project and future explotation of the survey.
