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In this thesis we analyse the observational relations between galaxy structure and global stellar population properties to determine the dependencies between a galaxy’s star formation and mass assembly histories. Stellar population parameters correlate with a range of galaxy properties, but it is unclear which relations are causal and which are the result of another underlying trend. The well-established correlations between mass and other galaxy properties are often considered evidence for mass driving a galaxy’s evolution. However, we find that, at fixed mass, stellar population properties show significant dependence on size, indicating that the size of a galaxy is also an important property tracing, and possibly influencing, its evolution. The focus of the thesis is to quantitatively compare trends between various stellar population properties and key galaxy structural parameters --- in particular the galaxy’s mass, gravitational potential, and surface density --- in order to determine which relations are intrinsically tighter and are therefore more likely to reflect a causal relation. We divide our work into three parts focusing on early-type galaxies, star-forming galaxies and micro high-redshift galaxies, respectively. This division reflects both the physical differences between these samples, as well as technical differences in measuring their stellar population properties. |
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