My research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies and the star-formation history of the Universe, mainly through the study of the far-infrared/submm emission of galaxies across cosmic time. In this wavelength range, we observe the thermal emission from the interstellar dust that absorbs the ultraviolet light from young stars, as well as emission lines from the gas at the origin of the formation of new stars.
Past Projects
My past projects have been mainly articulated around the utilisation of deep infrared observations made by the Spitzer and Herschel Space observatories as well as of deep millimetre observations from the interferometer of the Plateau-de-Bures (PdBI). These large panchromatic samples of galaxies gave me the opportunity to study the evolution of the spectral properties of star-forming galaxies with redshift, to estimate the star-formation history of the Universe up to a z~2.3 (i.e., when the Universe was only 3 Gyr old), to study the spectral properties of the most extreme galaxies of our Universe, namely the submillimetre galaxies (SMGs), and finally to study the molecular gas content of high-redshift galaxies. All these studies have demonstrated that the Universe was forming 10 times more stars 10 billion years ago and that this increase could mostly be explained by the evolution of the internal properties of galaxies (i.e., gas content and dynamic) rather than by an increase of the major-merger rate in the high-redshift Universe. They have also demonstrated the importance of the main-sequence traced by star-forming galaxies in the SFR-M∗ plane for our understanding of the mechanisms triggering star-formation activities across cosmic time.
All these results are presented below, for more details just clic on the corresponding figure. Alternatively, all papers linked to these results can be found here.
Materials for the community developed during my studies are presented here.
The 0< z < 2.3 star formation history of the Universe as viewed in the far-infrared Magnelli et al. (2009, 2011, 2013)
The far-infrared properties of the Submillimetre Galaxies Magnelli et al. (2010, 2012a)
Dust temperature and CO→H2 conversion factor variations in high-redshift galaxies Magnelli et al. (2012b)
Evolution of the dust temperature of star-forming galaxies in the SFR-M∗ plane Magnelli et al. (2014)
Evolution of the FIR/radio correlation of star-forming galaxies in the SFR-M∗ plane Magnelli et al. (2015)