Galaxy Clusters are the most massive structures in our Universe. They comprise of hundreds of galaxies surrounded by a hot, dense plasma and embedded in a dark matter halo of mass >10^14 solar masses. In this seminar, I will discuss why clusters are excellent probes of cosmology and galaxy evolution. I will then focus on the question of galaxy pre-processing: Are galaxies affected by their environment before they fall into the cluster, or can we consider galaxies to be pristine before they pass the virial radius? I will present evidence that galaxy pre-processing is important both for local clusters and the most distant clusters at z > 1, and I will discuss how these findings may affect our interpretation of satellite quenching.

BIO

Dr. Nina Hatch studied for her PhD at the University of Cambridge (UK) with Prof Andrew Fabian, on the topic of Ionised and Molecular Gas in Brightest Cluster Galaxies. After She graduated in 2006, she moved to Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, where she worked with Prof. George Miley and Prof Huub Rottgering, on radio galaxies and their environments. It was in the Netherlands that she became interested in galaxy protoclusters, which has been the focus of her research since that time. After Leiden, she won a personal Fellowship from the UK research council to research clusters and protoclusters at Nottingham University in the UK, and she has remained there ever since. She was made an assistant professor in 2013, and was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2019.