Extragalactic Astronomy
As we reach beyond the stretch of our own Milky Way within Stellar and Galactic Astronomy, we enter the realm of Extragalactic Astronomy — a rich an active field of study in modern Astrophysics. At the IEA, we focus on Galaxy Formation and Evolution, AGN and Supermassive Black Holes, high-redshift quasars and Hot Dust Obscured Galaxies, and Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe. Explore featured projects in each area.
Extragalactic Astronomy revolves around understanding gravitational interactions and their influence in driving the evolution of matter in the Universe through a variety of physical processes across time. This is a crucial area of research because galaxies are often considered astrophysical laboratories, which are interconnected with the larger picture of cosmology and understanding how the Universe itself has been evolving and will continue to evolve in cosmic time. The finite speed of light allows us to “time travel” as we look further and further away, observing the Universe across its history.
Our strategic location in Chile equips us with access to an array of observatories to investigate this field — these include ground-based facilities such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Magellan Telescopes, the Gemini Observatory, and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). We also work with space-based observatories including the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), XMM-Newton, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Swift, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
In addition, we are actively involved in several large-scale international survey projects, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V), the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and the 4m Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), which are set to transform our understanding of galaxies and their evolution.
Galaxy Formation and Evolution
From nearby low-redshift galaxies and their stellar populations to distant high-redshift galaxies and their environments, to understand how galaxies form and evolve through time. To tie them all together, we also study the life cycle of stars and gas within galaxies across redshifts, and the diffuse interstellar and intergalactic medium, as well as the circumgalactic environment that connects them. Our studies combine photometry and spectroscopy across the spectrum - from millimeter to the optical to X-rays.
AGN and Black Holes
We explore some of the most violent and energetic regions of galaxies — the active galactic nuclei (AGN) — to understand how supermassive black holes (SMBH) grow and interact with their environment. Our research spans from radio-quiet to radio-loud AGN, probing their circumnuclear environments, accretion physics, and feedback processes. Using multi-wavelength observations — from radio to optical to X-rays — we develop theoretical models and photometric estimates to trace the role of AGN and SMBH across the cosmic history of the Universe.
High-redshift Quasars and Hot DOGs
Peering into the most luminous and dust-enshrouded galaxies and quasars in the early universe, we try to uncover how supermassive black holes (SMBH) and massive galaxies co-evolve. These extreme systems inform us about rapid accretion, galaxy mergers, and the formation of the first massive structures since the Epoch of Reionization. Our work combines photometry, spectroscopy, polarimetry, and SED-based selection techniques across surveys and individually selected objects to tie in their role in different phases of galaxy evolution.
Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
Entering the era of precision cosmology, we leverage state-of-the-art statistical techniques and deep galaxy surveys to test the foundations of our cosmological model. The percent-level precision of theoretical parameters from observational data now start to reveal potential cracks in our cosmological picture, warranting the need for new fundamental physics to explain them — or drastically change the way in which we understand and process our data. With this goal, we probe the nature of dark energy and the growth of cosmic structure, as we lie at the intersection of cosmology and particle physics.