My Work
A high spatial resolution view of the hot gas in the most distant galaxy cluster.
ReCESS
The Representative Cluster Evolution SZ Survey (ReCESS) is a project that studies the intracluster medium (ICM) in galaxy clusters at high redshifts (z > 1.25) using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect at arcsecond scale resolution. By examining these high-z clusters, initially selected through ACT observations, I aim to study their dynamical states, morphology, and evolutionary processes, as I explain in this talk.
Recently, we secured over 80 hours of observing time on the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and ALMA+ACA time to systematically follow up on all z > 1.25 clusters detected by ACT. These observations will allow us to study clusters during their most active growth periods and address systematics in cluster cosmology measurements at these uncharted epochs.
Maria
I developed a versatile, user-friendly simulator to optimize scanning strategies and instrument designs to efficiently reduce atmospheric noise and filtering effects. We further use this tool to produce synthetic time streams and maps from hydrodynamical simulations, enabling a fair comparison between theory and reality. To generate synthetic time-ordered data, we developed a multi-purpose telescope simulator called maria, which implements a suite of telescope and instrument designs intended to mimic current and future facilities. Each mock observatory scans through the atmosphere in a configurable pattern over the celestial object. We generate evolving and location-and-time-specific weather for each of the fiducial sites using a combination of satellite and ground-based measurements.
For a detailed description of the tool and tutorials on how to use it, please visit.
The epoch of Reionization
I helped write an ALMA DDT proposal to observe FIR lines targeting a galaxy at z>10. The proposal was successful, and the data was published in Kaasinen+2023. For this study, I developed a novel technique to robustly quantify the likelihood of faint emission lines being real. We further applied this technique to all archival ALMA observations targeting galaxy candidates at z>10. The results are part of another academic work, currently submitted as van Marrewijk et al. (Sub). Sadly, we didn't detect any galaxy at at z>10 in the sub-mm regime. The tool is publically available and presented with easy-to-use tutorials:
My master’s
I have done my master’s in Leiden. There, you do two master theses. With the first thesis, I kept busy with what drives star formation in starburst galaxies at the cosmic noon. In this master thesis (supervised by J. Hodge and M. Rybak), I developed an advanced data analysis technique that searches for weak spectral lines in distant galaxies through a matched filter in the uv-plane. Here, I detected the first HCO+(4-3) line in a high redshift SMG. This detection was visible in the image plane with a resolution of 20 mas! My work is continued in a series of papers that will characterize how dense gases are manifested in a large sample of starburst galaxies.
With my other thesis (supervised by H. Hoekstra and S. Debackere), I looked at how small-scale clumping in the ICM affects the X-ray luminosity—halo mass relationship. To study systematics, I created a phenomenological model based on hydrodynamical simulations that create mock observations of galaxy clusters in the X-ray for varying clumping properties.
