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ETH

ETH Physics
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Extragalactic Astrophysics &
Observational Cosmology Group
 
C. Marcella Carollo

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
 
Postal Address:
ETH Hoenggerberg Campus
Physics Department, HIT J 12.1
CH-8093 Zurich
Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0)44 633-3725
Fax: +41 (0)44 633-1238
Secy: +41 (0)44 633-7608
Email: marcella@phys.ethz.ch
Curriculum Vitae
Education:
1994 Ph.D. in Astrophysics (Honors); LMU, Munich (Germany)
Employment:
2007 -             Full Professor, ETH Zurich
2002 - 2006   Associate Professor, ETH Zurich
2000 - 2001   Assistant Professor, Columbia University, NY, NY
1997 - 1999   Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
1994 - 1996   Postdoctoral Fellow, Leiden University, NL
Awards:
INRC Fellowship
European Community Award Fellowship
Hubble Fellowship

Link to the websites of my
RESEARCH GROUP MEMBERS
for further information on my on-going programs

Dr. M. Aller
Postdoc 		Dr. Ewan Cameron
Postdoc 		Dr. R. Kramer
Zwicky Fellow
Start january 1, 2010 		Dr. T. Kaufmann
SNF Fellow
Thomas Bschorr Pierluigi Cerulo Anna Cibinel Pascal Oesch
Christine Corbett Moran Catrina Diener Andreas Faisst Pascal Steger
Previous PhD Students at the ETH
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RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dark Matter and Dark Energy; Formation, Evolution, Structure, Dynamics, Populations of Galaxies; Co-evolution of Galaxies and Massive Black Holes

I am leading the "Extragalactic Astrophysics Group" at ETH. The group conducts both observational and theoretical/numerical work, mostly dedicated to understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies from the early epochs to our time.

Part of the group is involved in large observational astronomical surveys (optical and near-infrared, photometric and spectroscopic, groundbased and Hubble Space Telescope, HST) to study the nature and origin of galaxies through observations of nearby and distant galaxies.

I am a core member of the COSMOS team. COSMOS is a global collaboration built around an HST Treasury Program of ACS images covering an unprecedentedly large 2square-degree field with extensive follow-up observations, over a broad range of wavelengths, using forefront facilities around the world. Part of my group is focussing on the analysis of the COSMOS database. The size of the COSMOS ACS field is chosen so that the transverse dimension exceeds 50 comoving Mpc at all redshifts z > 0.5, thus comfortably exceeding the largest known structures in the Universe, minimizing cosmic variance and ensuring that the full range of cosmic environments is sampled. COSMOS is thus built to study the galaxy versus large-scale structure relation at high redshifts, matching similar local efforts such as the SLOAN survey.

COSMOS is supplemented by zCOSMOS, a 40'000 redshift survey on the VLT to trace the group environment and the large-scale structure of the COSMOS galaxies. I am a member of the zCOSMOS Steering Committee, and my group is also involved in the analysis of the zCOSMOS database.

I am leading the ETH Ultra-VISTA efforts. Ultra-VISTA aims to image in the near-infrared the COSMOS field to unprecedented depths. The survey will use the Y, J, H, and Ks broadband filters along with one narrow-band filter specifically designed to study Lyman-a emitters at redshift 8.8, of which ~30 are expected to be found with this survey. The science goals of Ultra-VISTA include studying the first galaxies, the stellar mass build-up during the peak epoch of star formation activity, and dust obscured star formation.

My current observational research on the local Universe focuses on environmental effects: I am the PI of ZENS, the Zurich ENvironmental Survey, an ESO Large Program of wide-field imaging of about 200 2dFGRS-2PIGG galaxy groups. ZENS focuses on the detailed galaxy structural and colour properties, and HI group properties, as a function of group mass, density, compactness and location respective to the large-scale structure. I have also started an (HST) investigation of the environmental dependence of nuclear galactic properties.

I am also a member of the DUNE Consortium. DUNE was proposed as a COSMIC VISIONS program at the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY (ESA), and was ranked first (together with "SPACE") and selected for further study. The Dark UNiverse Explorer (DUNE) is a wide-field space imager whose primary goal is the study of dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision. For this purpose, DUNE is optimised for weak gravitational lensing, and will also include Baryonic Accoustic Oscillations, galaxy clusters and the Integrated-Sachs Wolf effect as complementary cosmological probes. Immediate secondary goals concern the evolution of galaxies, the detailed structure of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, and the demographics of Earth-mass exoplanets. DUNE has evolved into EUCLID, a merged concept of DUNE and SPACE currently under study at ESA.

Part of my group is investigating from a theoretical/numerical perspective key questions on the formation and evolution of galaxies, also of primary relevance to the development of EUCLID. In particular, we are using the ETH BRUTUS Cluster and the Cray XT-3 at CSCS (A) to quantify galaxy alignements with the large-scale structure, a key input to EUCLID's lensing analysis for the determination of the equation of state of dark energy; and (B) to study the formation and evolution of massive central galaxies - and their satellites - in the potentials of galaxy groups.
RECENT PAPERS (SELECTED)
Instrumentation Projects

I am a member of the MUSE consortium, a 2nd-generation IFU spectrograph for the ESO VLT. MUSE first-light is in 2011. We in the MUSE consortium have now proposed to ESO a rescaled version of MUSE (ERASMUS), a MUSE-like IFU optical spectrograph for the 42m ESO ELT (first-light 2017).

I am a member of the Science Oversight Committee for the Wide Field Planetary Camera 3 (WFC3) to be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in Spring 2009.
Teaching
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