Integral field spectroscopy of high redshift galaxies with the HARMONI spectrograph on the European Extremely Large Telescope

We present here results of simulated integral field spectroscopic observations with the HARMONI instrument for the 39-m European Extremely Large Telescope. HARMONI (PI: N. Thatte) will provide adaptive optics- assisted 3D spectroscopy at a range of spatial scales and spectral resolutions. The instrument will for the first time allow the spectroscopic study of z = 2 - 5 galaxies at the scales of individual star-forming complexes (∼100 pc). Using a sophisticated instrument simulator we show here innovative simulated observations of a star-forming galaxy at z = 3, based on output from cosmological simulations using the RAMSES code. Our simulator includes realistic adaptive optics point spread functions, atmospheric and instrumental noise models and observational parameters. Using these simulations, we can test analysis methods for the study of the galaxy’s dynamics and kinematics and compare these against predictions from galaxy evolution models. We thus demonstrate a methodology for predicting future observables from cosmological simulations.

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