The most outstanding question in observational cosmology is ``How did galaxies form and evolve to the spirals and ellipiticals we have locally?'' One way to study galaxy formation is to use QSO absorption line clouds, and some recent projects include using the SDSS database to look at the distribution of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) around MgII absorbers at redshifts 0.4-0.8. From this studay came a surprising result, namely that mass and line-of-sight velocity dispersion are anti-correlated. This showed us that QSO absorption line cloud may have a lot to do with outflowing material. This result prompted me to use the Integral Field Sprectrograph (IFUs) SINFONI to search, and discover the absorber hosts. In 2/3 of the cases, we succeeded in unveiling the galaxy ( ESO PR ).

Another way to study galaxy formation is to constrain the kinematics of galaxies directly. This is now possible thanks to the recent technological development, and in particular thanks to IFUs like SINFONI. Since arriving at MPE , in collaboration with the SINS team, we demonstrated that z>2 star forming galaxies are rotating thick gas disks.

See my CV or publications for the details!

Refereed

A complete list of publications can be found from ADS Abstract.
Some highlight results:

• Bouché N., Murphy M., Péroux C., Davies R., Eisenhauer F., Forster Schreiber N., Tacconi L.
  The SINFONI MgII Program for Line Emitters (SIMPLE): Discovering starbursts near QSO sight lines, 2007, ApJ, 669, 5 ( astro-ph/0709.4248 )
News : ESO PR     Science Daily     UK register     Sydney     Sc Alert AUS     Astronomy     Innov. report     Space ref.     Calif. Sc. news     Composed gentleman     USAtoday
• Bouché N., Dekel A., Genzel R., Genel S. et al.
  The Impact of cold gas accretion above a mass floor on galaxy scaling relations ArXiv

Unrefereed

1. Galaxies near the near the Galactic Anti-center is a report on my preliminary research on 2MASS, done at IPAC in 1998.
2. My second year research project:(html)   Tully-Fisher relation with 2MASS, 2000
3. IR-Tully Fisher Relation In The Zone Of Avoidance With 2MASS, in  Mapping the Hidden Universe: The Universe Behind the Milky Way - The Universe in HI, ASP Conference Series 2000, eds R.C.Kraan-Korteweg, P.A. Henning and H. Andernach (html; astro-ph/0005231)
4. Galaxies near distant damped Ly-alpha clouds, 2000 in Deep Fields - ESO Astrophysics Symposia, Eds S. Cristiani, A. Renzini, R.E. Williams, Springer-Verlag
5. Galaxies at z=3 around Damped Ly-alpha Clouds, 2003 in ``Galaxy Evolution: Theory and Observations'', RevMexAA 17, 256; eds. V. Avila-Reese, C. Firmani, C. Frenk, C. Allen (astro-ph/0212206)
6. Measuring the halo mass of Mg II absorbers from their cross-correlation with Luminous Red Galaxies, 2005 in ``Probing Galaxies through Quasar Absorption Lines, IAU Colloquium Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union 199 '', edited by Peter R. Williams, Cheng-Gang Shu and Brice Menard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005., pp.403-405 (astro-ph/0504415)

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