Witnessing galaxy formation in the most distant galaxy clusters

星系团是一个星系可以生存的密集场所，包含数千个通过相互引力结合在一起的独立星系。团星系通常在颜色和形状上与居住在较低密度场中的星系不同，这意味着星系受到环境的影响。其中一些差异是由今天作用于星系的致密环境造成的，但也有一些微妙的差异，这些差异一定是很久以前就设定的。例如，团星系通常比场星系更大、更老、更大，这意味着星系诞生时的环境也有重要而持久的影响。确定早期宇宙中星系的环境极具挑战性，因此我们目前对星系诞生过程中环境的作用知之甚少。这导致我们对宇宙如何演化的理解存在很大差距。在这个博士在这个项目中，我们将使用宇宙中最遥远的星系团的最先进的观测来了解星系在形成时如何受到周围环境的影响。

Galaxy clusters are the densest places a galaxy can live, containing thousands of individual galaxies bound together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Cluster galaxies typically differ in colour and shape from galaxies that reside in the less dense field implying that galaxies are influenced by their environment. Some of these differences are caused by the dense environment acting on the galaxies today, but there are also subtle differences that must have been set long ago. For example, cluster galaxies are typically more massive, older and larger than field galaxies, implying that a galaxy's surroundings during its birth also have an important and lasting influence. Determining the environment of a galaxy in the early Universe is extremely challenging, so we currently know very little about the role of environment during a galaxy's birth. This has resulted in a large gap in our understanding of how the Universe evolved. In this Ph.D. project we will use state-of-the-art observations of the most distant galaxy clusters in the Universe to understand how galaxies are influenced by their surroundings whilst they are forming.