Julie Wardlow : Understanding the environments of extreme dusty star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe

In recent years the high-redshift Universe has been increasingly opened to scrutiny at far-infrared wavelengths, where cool dust emission from star-formation dominates. The dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs), selected at these wavelengths likely represent an important, but short-lived phase in the growth of massive galaxies. These DSFGs often have star-formation rates in excess of ~1000 solar masses per year and are confirmed beyond z~6, although their redshifts and high dust contents make them faint and difficult to study at other wavelengths. I will explore DSFGs further and present data that probes their environments and triggering mechanisms to test whether they are the likely progenitors of local massive early-type galaxies.