I am a DFG-funded Emmy-Noether Research Group Leader at the Heidelberg University (ARI). You can find out more about our research group GALENA at this link. Feel free to contact me about potential PhD, Master or Bachelor Projects in our group.

Before starting this position, I was an ESO Fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Garching b. Munich and an Akbari-Mack and Provost Diversity Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department for Physics & Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. I completed my PhD at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and ESO as a fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on Astrophysics (IMPRS).

The goal of my research is to understand how galaxies form and evolve and what physical processes are most important at different cosmic epochs and spatial scales. I am particularly fascinated by supermassive black holes which are some of the most mysterious objects that astronomers have tried to understand for over 100 years, ever since Karl Schwarzschild presented his solutions to the Einstein Field Equations in 1916. Supermassive black holes are now thought to be hosted by every massive galaxy in the Universe and the energy output of actively accreting supermassive black holes (active galactic nuclei, AGN) has become a critical ingredient in modern galaxy formation theories. I use multi-wavelength photometric and spectral observations to address various aspects in the field of extragalactic astronomy, in particular AGN physics and feedback signatures and the role of AGN in galaxy evolution. I am also very interested in the build-up of large scale structure in the early phases of the Universe and am actively involved in many high-redshift galaxy cluster studies.

Research

JWST ERS Program

Our team was granted ~ 30 hours of observing time with the James Webb Space Telescope as part of the Early Release Science Program. Using a combination of the NIRSpec on MIRI IFUs, JWST has observed distant galaxies with powerful supermassive black holes for our team allowing us to resolve how and where these black holes impact the evolution and growth of their host galaxies. You can find more information here: Q3D ERS Website.

AGN and Galaxy Evolution

Many observations in the past decades have made it clear that the active (quasar) phase of black hole evolution can have profound effects on the formation of the galaxy. One idea – quasar feedback – seeks to simultaneously explain several major observational findings and open issues in galaxy formation theory such as the observed relations between black holes and their hosts.

However, specific examples of quasar-driven feedback in action have been surprisingly hard to come by, and it is far from clear how exactly the coupling between accretion energy and matter on galactic scales is established. Understanding the mechanism, the physics of quasar feedback and its impact on the quasar host galaxy is a major topic of my research.
see e.g. Wylezalek+2018, Wylezalek+2017, Wylezalek+2016b, Zakamska+20166, Wylezalek+2016a, Obied+2016

The build-up of structure

Emerging from the cosmic web, galaxy clusters are the most massive gravitationally bound structures in the universe. Thought to have begun their assembly at 2 < z < 3, clusters provide insights into the growth of large-scale structure as well as the physics that drives galaxy evolution. Our group has successfully identified a very promising sample of ∼ 200 galaxy cluster candidates at z > 1.3, one of the most powerful cluster samples to study galaxy evolution in the densest and most massive environments at high redshift.

see e.g. Noirot+2016, Cooke+2016, Cooke+2015, Hatch+2014, Wylezalek+2014, Wylezalek+2013

CV

A full version can be obtained upon request.

Publications

Contact Me

Dominika Wylezalek
Astronomisches Rechen-Institut
Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg
Mönchhofstr. 12-14
69120 Heidelberg
Germany

phone: +49 6221 54 1858
email: dominika [dot] wylezalek [at] uni [minus] heidelberg.de