Prof. Mark Swinbank

Center for Extragalactic Astronomy,
Department of Physics, South Road, Durham; DH1 3EE
Tel: +44-191-334-3786;

I am an extra-galactic astronomer in the Institute for Computational Cosmology at the University of Durham. My research interests include the formation and evolution of galaxies, galaxy clusters, large scale structure and galaxies in interaction. I exploit multi-wavelength data to explore the properties of high-redshift galaxies to explore the processes which shaped galaxies in the local Universe. I also use strong gravitational lensing (the deflection of light by massive foreground galaxy clusters) to boost the sizes and brightnesses of images of distant, young galaxies to resolve structures and dynamics on scales which would otherwise be impossible with current technology. My research interests also include obscured star-forming galaxies -- selected at sub-mm and radio wavebands. These galaxies are seen in the sub-mm as the UV/optical starlight from young, massive stars is absorbed by dust and re-radiated in the far-infrared waveband. Sub-mm galaxies are a major population in the early Universe, contributing around 30% of the energy density at redshift (z)~2; (ie. seen 10 billion years ago) and represent the formation epoch of todays massive luminous elliptical galaxies.

Current Programs

KROSS
KGES
KURVS
LESS
zLESS

Telescopes

ESO
Gemini
HST
Keck
UKIRT
WHT
PdBI

Movie Pages...

01. "The (Dynamical) Hubble Sequence" Videos here

02. ``KMOS and MUSE videos..." here

03. ``How do galaxies rotate? Watch galaxies spin " Videos here

04. ``The UDS field as seen by UKIDSS, HST and ALMA" The Movies

05. ``The UDF as seen by HST, ALMA and MUSE:" The Movies

06. ``The GAMA Universe: The G15 field:" The Movies

07. ``An ALMA Survey of Sub-Millimeter Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South:" The Movies

08. ``The Relation between Galaxies and their Dark Matter Halos:" The Movies

09. `The ISM in distant star forming galaxies: a PdBI study of the cold molecular gas in a star forming galaxy at z=2.3" The Movies

10. ``Cosmic Origins: the Hubble Deep Field fly through" Cosmic Origins and the HDF flythrough clips

Recent Science Highlights...

01. ``The Shapes of the Outer Rotation Curves in Galaxies over the last 10 Billion Years" Tiley et al. 2019 MNRAS 485 934

02. ``An ALMA survey of CO in submillimetre galaxies: companions, triggering, and the environment in blended sources" Wardlow et al. 2018 MNRAS 479 3879

03. ``An ALMA Survey of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey UKIDSS/UDS Field: Identifying z~4.5 [CII] emitters" Cooke et al. 2018 ApJ 861 100

04. ``Angular momentum evolution of galaxies over the past 10Gyr: A MUSE and KMOS dynamical survey of 400 star-forming galaxies from z=0.3-1.7" Swinbank et al. 2016 The Paper, Tables and reduced MUSE cubes are available here

05. ``The KMOS Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS): the origin of disc turbulence in z=1 star-forming galaxies" Johnson et al. 2018 2018 MNRAS 474 5076

06. ``The KMOS Redshift One Spectroscopic Survey (KROSS): rotational velocities and angular momentum of z=1 galaxies" Harrison et al. 2018 MNRAS 467 1965

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