<> "The repository administrator has not yet configured an RDF license."^^ . <> . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers"^^ . "Galaxy interactions are expected to play a crucial role in the build--up of stellar mass in any cold dark matter cosmology. Of particular interest are the mergers between systems of a comparable mass, as they are predicted to be one of the main modes of galaxy growth and have a crucial impact in the shaping of galaxy morphologies and dynamics. In this thesis I study two key aspects of the role that mergers play in galaxy evolution: a) What is the contribution of major galaxy interactions to the star formation history of the Universe at z < 1?, and b) How important are galaxy interactions for the build--up of the massive end of the red sequence? To answer the first question I use photometric redshifts, stellar masses and UV star formation rates from COMBO-17, 24 microns star formation rates from Spitzer and galaxy morphologies from two deep Hubble Space Telescope cosmological survey fields to study the enhancement in star formation activity as a function of galaxy separation. I apply robust statistical tools to find galaxies in close pairs, augmented with morphologically-selected very close pairs (unresolved in the ground-based photometry) and merger remnants from the Hubble Space Telescope imaging, finding that, on average, major galaxy interactions between galaxies more massive than 10^10 M_sun at 0.4 5x10^10M_sun galaxies in close pairs (a proxy for the fraction of objects involved in an interaction) were more common 7 Gyrs ago by a factor ~2. By converting this merger fraction to a merger rate I estimate that 70% of the very massive galaxies (M_*>10^11 M_sun) have undergone a merger since z=1.2. This merger rate is sufficient to explain the observed number density evolution of such massive galaxies in the last 7 Gyrs. Merging plays, therefore, a dominant role in the formation of massive galaxies in the Universe."^^ . "2010" . . . . . . . . "Aday"^^ . "Robaina Rapisarda"^^ . "Aday Robaina Rapisarda"^^ . . . . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (PDF)"^^ . . . "thesis2RobainaRapisarda.pdf"^^ . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (Other)"^^ . . . . . . "indexcodes.txt"^^ . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (Other)"^^ . . . . . . "lightbox.jpg"^^ . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (Other)"^^ . . . . . . "preview.jpg"^^ . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (Other)"^^ . . . . . . "medium.jpg"^^ . . . "Eight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers (Other)"^^ . . . . . . "small.jpg"^^ . . "HTML Summary of #10688 \n\nEight Gigayears of Galaxy Mergers\n\n" . "text/html" . . . "520 Astronomie"@de . "520 Astronomy and allied sciences"@en . .