Dr Angelica Lola Danhaive

PhD thesis

The dynamical assembly of galaxies and their dark matter halos in the early Universe

The focus of my PhD project was to study early galaxy formation and evolution with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). I used the wide field slitless spectroscopy (WFSS) mode of the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on JWST to model the dynamics and shapes (morphologies) of galaxies in the first two billion years after the Big Bang. Using a novel Bayesian forward-modelling code GEKO that I developed, I measured the dynamics of over 200 young galaxies. I discovered that their assembly is turbulent and chaotic, unlike the evolution of local disk galaxies. I investigated how the highly variable (or “bursty”) star formation in the early Universe affects the dynamics and morphologies of the gas and stars in galaxies, as well as the underlying dark matter halos. This is only the beginning of this exciting avenue of research whose goal is to understand how the first galaxies formed and later evolved into galaxies like our Miky Way.

After the PhD

After completing my PhD, I will continue my research as a Hintze Fellow in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. After two years, I will move the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) in Tokyo as a postdoctoral fellow for two years. These four years will allow me to continue my research independently and to build collaborations across these two prestigious institutions.