Research Division Seminar
What is triggering star formation in Very Young Galaxies in the local Universe?

Abstract

In the local Universe, there are a handful of dwarf star-forming galaxies that are young, having formed a large fraction of their stellar mass during their last few hundred Myr. However, little is known about the fraction of young stellar populations in more massive galaxies. Using the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we identified a surprisingly large sample of more massive, very young galaxies (VYGs), defined to have formed at least 50 per cent of their stellar mass within the last 1 Gyr. In this seminar, I will present our study on the fractions, properties and environment of low-redshift VYGs in observations and simulations, discuss possible mechanisms responsible for the recent triggering of intense star formation activity in these systems, and argue that VYGs can be useful in constraining the uncertainties in both galaxy formation models and spectral modelling of galaxy star formation histories.