Galaxy formation and evolution

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A second major axis is galaxy formation and evolution across cosmic time. With collaborators at SISSA I have analysed the spectral properties of high-redshift galaxies using theoretical models of star formation and dust processes.

This led to GalaPy, a public code that simulates the panchromatic emission of galaxies from X-rays to radio, offering full SED modelling, Bayesian inference, and a computationally efficient implementation. It is the fastest SED-generation tool of its kind, with a peak performance of almost 1000 SEDs per second on a single core, thanks to a hybrid C++/Python architecture that generates models on the fly rather than relying on templates.

Since its release GalaPy has gained users across Europe, Asia and South America, and has been adopted for studies ranging from nearby resolved galaxies to JWST high-redshift candidates. In a recent paper I presented the computational design of the code in detail: its object-oriented architecture, a hybrid parallelisation strategy combining vectorised array programming, shared-memory concurrency and distributed-memory message passing, and the optimisations that keep it portable with minimal memory overhead. That work also introduced two new capabilities — parallel sampling for Bayesian inference, and a fully analytical panchromatic AGN component.

Currently: GalaPy is developing along two directions. I am co-supervising a Ph.D. student implementing panchromatic line emission in GalaPy SEDs, covering both the physics of emission lines and the sampling strategies needed for efficient inference. Meanwhile growing adoption for JWST and ALMA data is driving further computational optimisation and validated spectroscopic fitting beyond the current photometric mode.

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ALMA |

Galaxy formation and evolution