We present a comprehensive multi-wavelength study of GRB 260310A / SN 2026fgk, a nearby ($z=0.153$), long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) with an exceptionally underluminous prompt $γ$-ray emission and a Comptonized spectrum. It is located at the edge of a blue host galaxy with a projected distance of 15 kpc, which is one of the largest offsets reported for a long GRB. The bright optical afterglow, with dense coverage from COLIBRÍ, likely peaked at a few to several hours post-burst, followed by a shallow decay not expected from canonical afterglow models. Both the optical and X-ray light curves show a brief chromatic plateau from $4-7$ days and a more standard decay thereafter only terminated with a rebrightening at $\sim20$ days. We demonstrate that this feature is best described by a combination of emission from the Ic-BL supernova, as identified in GTC spectra, and a late-time refreshed shock. The broadband optical to X-ray spectral energy distribution is well described by synchrotron emission from the forward shock, while the radio observations demand an additional emission component. We model the afterglow using (a) an on-axis uniform jet from a dirty fireball with late-time energy injection and (b) a misaligned jet with power-law angular structure, both having material emitting along our line-of-sight (LOS) moving with an initial Lorentz factor of $Γ_0\sim20-35$. Had this GRB occurred at a more typical redshift ($z\gtrsim0.5$), its prompt emission would likely have remained undetected by current $γ$-ray monitors while its optical afterglow would still have been readily detectable, placing it observationally among orphan afterglows or gamma-ray quiet fast X-ray transients.

The Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) is a "collaboration of collaborations" that is using the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope, the Pan-STARRS telescopes, and the Subaru Observatory to obtain $ugriz$ images of a core survey region of 6250 deg$^2$ of the northern sky. The $10\sigma$ point source depth of the data, as measured within a 2-arcsecond diameter aperture, are $[u,g,r,i,z] = [23.7, 24.5, 24.2, 23.8, 23.3]$\ in AB magnitudes. UNIONS is addressing some of the most fundamental questions in astronomy, including the properties of dark matter, the growth of structure in the Universe from the very smallest galaxies to large-scale structure, and the assembly of the Milky Way. It is set to become the major ground-based legacy survey for the northern hemisphere for the next decade and provides an essential northern complement to the static-sky science of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time. UNIONS supports the core science mission of the {\it Euclid} space mission by providing the data necessary in the northern hemisphere for the calibration of the wavelength dependence of the {\it Euclid} point-spread function and derivation of photometric redshifts in the North Galactic Cap. This region contains the highest quality sky for {\it Euclid}, with low backgrounds from the zodiacal light, stellar density, extinction, and emission from Galactic cirrus. Here, we describe the UNIONS survey components, science goals, data products, and the current status of the overall program.

Giant flares, short explosive events releasing up to 10$^{47}$ erg of energy in the gamma-ray band in less than one second, are the most spectacular manifestation of magnetars, young neutron stars powered by a very strong magnetic field, 10$^{14-15}$ G in the magnetosphere and possibly higher in the star interior. The rate of occurrence of these rare flares is poorly constrained, as only three have been seen from three different magnetars in the Milky Way and in the Large Magellanic Cloud in about 50 years since the beginning of gamma-ray astronomy. This sample can be enlarged by the discovery of extragalactic events, since for a fraction of a second giant flares reach peak luminosities above 10$^{46}$ erg/s, which makes them visible by current instruments up to a few tens of Mpc. However, at these distances they appear similar to, and difficult to distinguish from, regular short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The latter are much more energetic events, 10$^{50-53}$ erg, produced by compact binary mergers and originating at much larger distances. Indeed, only a few short GRBs have been proposed, with different levels of confidence, as magnetar giant flare candidates in nearby galaxies. Here we report the discovery of a short GRB positionally coincident with the central region of the starburst galaxy M82. Its spectral and timing properties, together with the limits on its X-ray and optical counterparts obtained a few hours after the event and the lack of an associated gravitational wave signal, qualify with high confidence this event as a giant flare from a magnetar in M82.

The mergers of binary compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes are of central interest to several areas of astrophysics, including as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)1, sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs)2 and likely production sites for heavy-element nucleosynthesis by means of rapid neutron capture (the r-process)3. Here we present observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 230307A. We show that GRB 230307A belongs to the class of long-duration GRBs associated with compact object mergers4-6 and contains a kilonova similar to AT2017gfo, associated with the GW merger GW170817 (refs. 7-12). We obtained James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy 29 and 61 days after the burst. The spectroscopy shows an emission line at 2.15 microns, which we interpret as tellurium (atomic mass A = 130) and a very red source, emitting most of its light in the mid-infrared owing to the production of lanthanides. These observations demonstrate that nucleosynthesis in GRBs can create r-process elements across a broad atomic mass range and play a central role in heavy-element nucleosynthesis across the Universe.

Quelques années à peine après la découverte de l’existence des galaxies, nous avons compris en étudiant leur dynamique que l’Univers avait une histoire, celle qui a succédé au Big Bang et à l’expansion de l’Univers. Malgré cela, il a fallu de nombreuses années pour réaliser que les galaxies évoluaient en permanence, tant au niveau de leur forme que de leurs couleurs ou de leur activité de formation d’étoiles ou de la croissance de leur trou noir galactique. Il faudra attendre le milieu des années 1990 pour que l’on réalise que la formation des galaxies était un processus véritablement continu, après l’échec cuisant de la quête des galaxies primordiales entreprise dans les années 1980-1990. L’histoire de l’évolution cosmique des galaxies suit de près les progrès réalisés dans les techniques d’observation de l’univers, avec l’arrivée des télescopes de la classe des 8-10 mètres, le télescope spatial Hubble et l’approche multi-longueurs d’ondes révélant à chaque fréquence du spectre électromagnétique une facette différente des galaxies.

The study of the cosmic evolution of galaxies has made remarkable progress over the past few decades. For a long time, it was thought that dark matter primarily acted on the cosmic evolution of galaxies through mergers of dark matter halos and the galaxies at their centers, transforming spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies and triggering starbursts. From X-rays to radio waves, galaxies have very diverse spectral energy distributions (SEDs) that depend not only on the characteristics of their stellar populations. Analyzing and decomposing the SEDs of galaxies therefore gives us a wealth of information about their physical properties. In the visible domain, the spectral distribution of galaxies is also characterized by the presence of chemical emission and/or absorption lines, which are added to the stellar radiation continuum. Beyond the visible and infrared domains, galaxies also emit radiation at X-ray and radio frequencies.

Multi-messenger astrophysics is becoming a major avenue to explore the Universe, with the potential to span a vast range of redshifts. The growing synergies between different probes is opening new frontiers, which promise profound insights into several aspects of fundamental physics and cosmology. In this context, THESEUS will play a central role during the 2030s in detecting and localizing the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave and neutrino sources that the unprecedented sensitivity of next generation detectors will discover at much higher rates than the present. Here, we review the most important target signals from multi-messenger sources that THESEUS will be able to detect and characterize, discussing detection rate expectations and scientific impact.

The Infra-Red Telescope (IRT) is part of the payload of the THESEUS mission, which is one of the two ESA M5 candidates within the Cosmic Vision program, planned for launch in 2032. The THESEUS payload, composed by two high energy wide field monitors (SXI and XGIS) and a near infra-red telescope (IRT), is optimized to detect, localize and characterize Gamma-Ray Bursts and other high-energy transients. The main goal of the IRT is to identify and precisely localize the NIR counterparts of the high-energy sources and to measure their distance. Here we present the design of the IRT and its expected performance.

We present rest-frame far-infrared (FIR) and optical size measurements of AGN hosts and star-forming galaxies in the COSMOS field, enabled by high-resolution ALMA/1 mm (0.1 arcsec - 0.4 arcsec) and HST/F814W imaging ( 0.1 arcsec). Our sample includes 27 galaxies at z<2.5, classified as infrared-selected AGN (3 sources), X-ray selected AGN (4 sources), and non-AGN star-forming galaxies (20 sources), for which high-resolution Band 6/7 ALMA images are available at 1 mm from our own observing program as well as archival observations. The sizes and SFR surface densities measured from both ALMA/1 mm and HST/F814W images show that obscured AGN host galaxies are more compact than non-AGN star-forming galaxies at similar redshift and stellar mass. This result suggests that the obscured accretion phase may be related to galaxies experiencing a compaction of their gaseous component, which could be associated with enhanced central star formation before a subsequent quenching driving the formation of compact passive galaxies. Moreover, most of the detected and stacked rest-frame FIR sizes of AGNs in our sample are similar or more compact than their rest-frame optical sizes, which is consistent with recent results of ALMA detected sources. This might be explained by the fact that the dusty starbursts take place in the compact regions, and suggests that the star formation mechanisms in the compact regions of AGN hosts are similar to those observed in star-forming galaxies observed with ALMA.

We present the X-ray properties of 108 Dust-Obscured Galaxies (DOGs; F-24 mu m/F-R > 1000) in the COSMOS field, all of which are detected in at least three far-infrared bands with the Herschel Observatory. Out of the entire sample, 22 are individually detected in the hard 2-8 keV X-ray band by the Chandra COSMOS Legacy survey, allowing us to classify them as AGN. Six (27%) of them are Compton-thick AGN candidates with column densities N-H > 10(24) cm(-2), while 15 are moderately obscured AGNs with 10(22) < N-H < 10(24) cm(-2). Additionally, we estimate AGN contributions to the IR luminosity (8-1000 mu m rest-frame) greater than 20% for 19 DOGs based on SED decomposition using Spitzer/MIPS 24 mu m and the five Herschel bands (100-500 mu m). Only 7 of these are detected in X-rays individually. We performed an X-ray stacking analysis for the 86 undetected DOGs. We find that the AGN fraction in DOGs increases with 24 mu m flux and that it is higher than that of the general 24 mu m population. However, no significant difference is found when considering only X-ray detections. This strongly motivates the combined use of X-ray and far-IR surveys to successfully probe a wider population of AGNs, particularly for the most obscured ones.

We present a study of the connection among black hole accretion, star formation, and galaxy morphology at z <= 2.5. We focus on active galactic nuclei (AGNs) selected by their mid-IR power-law emission. By fitting optical to far-IR photometry with state-of-the-art spectral energy distribution (SED) techniques, we derive stellar masses, star formation rates, dust properties, and AGN contributions in galaxies over the whole COSMOS field. We find that obscured AGNs lie within or slightly above the star-forming sequence. We confirm our previous finding about compact host galaxies of obscured AGNs at z similar to 1, and find that galaxies with 20%-50% AGN contributions tend to have smaller sizes, by similar to 25%-50%, compared to galaxies without AGNs. Furthermore, we find that a high merger fraction of up to 0.5 is appropriate for the most luminous (log(L-IR/L-circle dot)similar to 12.5) AGN hosts and non-AGN galaxies, but not for the whole obscured AGN sample. Moreover, the merger fraction depends on the total and star-forming IR luminosity, rather than on the decomposed AGN infrared luminosity. Our results suggest that major mergers are not the main driver of AGN activity, and therefore obscured AGNs might be triggered by internal mechanisms, such as secular processes, disk instabilities, and compaction in a particular evolutionary stage. We make the SED modeling results publicly available.

We present a structural study of 182 obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at z ≤ 1.5, selected in the Cosmic Evolution Survey field from their extreme infrared to X-ray luminosity ratio and their negligible emission at optical wavelengths. We fit optical to far-infrared spectral energy distributions and analyse deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging to derive the physical and morphological properties of their host galaxies. We find that such galaxies are more compact than normal star-forming sources at similar redshift and stellar mass, and we show that it is not an observational bias related to the emission of the AGN. Based on the distribution of their UVJ colours, we also argue that this increased compactness is not due to the additional contribution of a passive bulge. We thus postulate that a vast majority of obscured AGNs reside in galaxies undergoing dynamical compaction, similar to processes recently invoked to explain the formation of compact star-forming sources at high redshift.

We performed a comprehensive stacking analysis on ∼14,200 quiescent galaxy (QG) candidates at z = 0–3 across mid-, far-infrared (MIR and FIR), and radio wavelengths. Identified via their rest-frame NUV − r and r − J colors, the QG candidates ( M ⋆ = 10 9.8 – 12.2 M ⊙ ?> ) have drastically different IR and radio properties depending on their 24 μm emission strength. The fraction of QG candidates with strong 24 μm emission (equivalent to inferred star formation rates SFR 24 ≥ 100 M ⊙ yr − 1 ?> , hereafter “IR-bright”) increases with redshift and peaks at 15%, and their stacked MIPS 24 μm, Herschel (PACS and SPIRE) and VLA emissions are consistent with being star-forming galaxies (SFGs). In contrast, the majority of QG candidates are faint or undetected at 24 μm individually (i.e., SFR24 < 100 M⊙ yr−1, hereafter “IR-faint”). Their low dust-obscured SFRs derived from Herschel stacking (SFRH ≲ 3, 15, 50 M⊙ yr−1 out to z ∼ 1, 2, 3) are >2.5–12.5× lower than compared to SFGs. This is consistent with the quiescence, as expected from their low unobscured SFRs, as inferred from modeling their ultraviolet-to-NIR photometry. The discrepancy between the LIR derived from stacking Herschel and 24 μm indicates that IR-faint QGs have dust SEDs that are different from those of SFGs. For the most massive ( M ⋆ ≥ 10 11 M ⊙ ?> ) IR-faint QGs at z < 1.5, the stacked 1.4 GHz emission is in excess of that expected from other SFR indicators, suggesting a widespread presence of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei. Our results reaffirm the existence of a significant population of QGs out to z = 3, thus corroborating the need to quench star formation in galaxies at early epochs.

The relationship between galaxy star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses (M*) is reexamined using a mass-selected sample of similar to 62,000 star-forming galaxies at z <= 1.3 in the COSMOS 2 deg2 field. Using new far-infrared photometry from Herschel-PACS and SPIRE and Spitzer-MIPS 24 mu m, along with derived infrared luminosities from the NRK method based on galaxies' locations in the restframe color-color diagram (NUV - r) versus (r - K), we are able to more accurately determine total SFRs for our complete sample. At all redshifts, the relationship between median SFR and M* follows a power law at low stellar masses, and flattens to nearly constant SFR at high stellar masses. We describe a new parameterization that provides the best fit to the main sequence and characterizes the low mass power-law slope, turnover mass, and overall scaling. The turnover in the main sequence occurs at a characteristic mass of about M-0 similar to 10(10) M-circle dot at all redshifts. The low mass power-law slope ranges from 0.9-1.3 and the overall scaling rises in SFR as a function of (1+z)(4.12 +/- 0.10). A broken power-law fit below and above the turnover mass gives relationships of SFR proportional to M*(0.88 +/- 0.06) below the turnover mass and SFR proportional to M*(0.27 +/- 0.04) above the turnover mass. Galaxies more massive than M* greater than or similar to 10(10)M(circle dot) have a much lower average specific star formation rate (sSFR) than would be expected by simply extrapolating the traditional linear fit to the main sequence found for less massive galaxies.

We aim to measure the average dust and molecular gas content of massive star-forming galaxies (>3 x 10(10) M-circle dot) up to z = 4 in the COSMOS field to determine if the intense star formation observed at high redshift is induced by major mergers or is caused by large gas reservoirs. Firstly, we measured the evolution of the average spectral energy distributions as a function of redshift using a stacking analysis of Spitzer, Herschel, LABOCA, and AzTEC data for two samples of galaxies: normal star-forming objects and strong starbursts, as defined by their distance to the main sequence. We found that the mean intensity of the radiation field < U > heating the dust (strongly correlated with dust temperature) increases with increasing redshift up to z = 4 in main-sequence galaxies. We can reproduce this evolution with simple models that account for the decrease in the gas metallicity with redshift. No evolution of < U > with redshift is found in strong starbursts. We then deduced the evolution of the molecular gas fraction (defined here as M-mol/(M-mol + M-star)) with redshift and found a similar, steeply increasing trend for both samples. At z similar to 4, this fraction reaches similar to 60%. The average position of the main-sequence galaxies is on the locus of the local, normal star-forming disks in the integrated Schmidt-Kennicutt diagram (star formation rate versus mass of molecular gas), suggesting that the bulk of the star formation up to z = 4 is dominated by secular processes.

Using the first 50% of data collected for the Spitzer Large Area Survey with Hyper-Suprime-Cam observations on the 1.8 deg(2) Cosmological Evolution Survey we estimate the masses and star formation rates of 3398M(*) > 10(10) M-circle dot star-forming galaxies at 4 < z < 6 with a substantial population up to M-* greater than or similar to 10(11.5) M-circle dot. We find that the strong correlation between stellar mass and star formation rate seen at lower redshift (the "main sequence" of star-forming galaxies) extends to z similar to 6. The observed relation and scatter is consistent with a continued increase in star formation rate at fixed mass in line with extrapolations from lower-redshift observations. It is difficult to explain this continued correlation, especially for the most massive systems, unless the most massive galaxies are forming stars near their Eddington-limited rate from their first collapse. Furthermore, we find no evidence for moderate quenching at higher masses, indicating quenching either has not occurred prior to z similar to 6 or else occurs rapidly, so that few galaxies are visible in transition between star-forming and quenched.

We compare the morphologies of a sample of 20 luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) from the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) in the FUV, B, I, and H bands, using the Gini (G) and M-20 parameters to quantitatively estimate the distribution and concentration of flux as a function of wavelength. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images provide an average spatial resolution of similar to 80 pc. While our LIRGs can be reliably classified as mergers across the entire range of wavelengths studied here, there is a clear shift toward more negative M-20 (more bulge-dominated) and a less significant decrease in G values at longer wavelengths. We find no correlation between the derived FUV G-M-20 parameters and the global measures of the IR to FUV flux ratio (IRX). Given the fine resolution in our HST data, this suggests either that the UV morphology and IRX are correlated on very small scales, or that the regions emitting the bulk of the IR emission emit almost no FUV light. We use our multi-wavelength data to simulate how merging LIRGs would appear from z similar to 0.5-3 in deep optical and near-infrared images such as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, and use these simulations to measure the G-M-20 at these redshifts. Our simulations indicate a noticeable decrease in G, which flattens at z >= 2 by as much as 40%, resulting in mis-classifying our LIRGs as disk-like, even in the rest-frame FUV. The higher redshift values of M-20 for the GOALS sources do not appear to change more than about 10% from the values at z similar to 0. The change in G-M-20 is caused by the surface brightness dimming of extended tidal features and asymmetries, and also the decreased spatial resolution which reduced the number of individual clumps identified. This effect, seen as early as z similar to 0.5, could easily lead to an underestimate of the number of merging galaxies at high-redshift in the rest-frame FUV.

Star-forming disk galaxies at high redshift are often subject to violent disk instability, characterized by giant clumps whose fate is yet to be understood. The main question is whether the clumps disrupt within their dynamical timescale (<50Myr), like molecular clouds in today's galaxies, or whether they survive stellar feedback for more than a disk orbital time ( 300Myr) in which case they can migrate inward and help building the central bulge. We present 3.5-7pc resolution AMR simulations of high-redshift disks including photo-ionization, radiation pressure, and supernovae feedback (Renaud et al. 2013, and Perret et al., this astro-ph issue). Our modeling of radiation pressure determines the mass loading and initial velocity of winds from basic physical principles. We find that the giant clumps produce steady outflow rates comparable to and sometimes somewhat larger than their star formation rate, with velocities largely sufficient to escape galaxy. The clumps also lose mass, especially old stars, by tidal stripping, and the stellar populations contained in the clumps hence remain relatively young (<=200Myr), as observed. The clumps survive gaseous outflows and stellar loss, because they are wandering in gas-rich turbulent disks from which they can re-accrete gas at high rates compensating for outflows and tidal stripping, overall keeping realistic and self-regulated gaseous and stellar masses. Our simulations produce gaseous outflows with velocities, densities and mass loading consistent with observations, and at the same time suggest that the giant clumps survive for hundreds of Myr and complete their migration to the center of high-redshift galaxies, without rapid dispersion and reformation of clumps.

Emission line diagnostic diagrams probing the ionization sources in galaxies, such as the Baldwin-Phillips-Terlevich (BPT) diagram, have been used extensively to distinguish AGN from purely star-forming galaxies. Yet, they remain poorly understood at higher redshifts. We shed light on this issue with an empirical approach based on a z 0 reference sample built from 300,000 SDSS galaxies, from which we mimic selection effects due to typical emission line detection limits at higher redshift. We combine this low-redshift reference sample with a simple prescription for luminosity evolution of the global galaxy population to predict the loci of high-redshift galaxies on the BPT and Mass-Excitation (MEx) diagnostic diagrams. The predicted bivariate distributions agree remarkably well with direct observations of galaxies out to z 1.5, including the observed stellar mass-metallicity (MZ) relation evolution. As a result, we infer that high-redshift star-forming galaxies are consistent with having "normal" ISM properties out to z 1.5, after accounting for selection effects and line luminosity evolution. Namely, their optical line ratios and gas-phase metallicities are comparable to that of low-redshift galaxies with equivalent emission-line luminosities. In contrast, AGN narrow-line regions may show a shift toward lower metallicities at higher redshift. While a physical evolution of the ISM conditions is not ruled out for purely star-forming galaxies, and may be more important starting at z>2, we find that reliably quantifying this evolution is hindered by selections effects. The recipes provided here may serve as a basis for future studies toward this goal. Code to predict the loci of galaxies on the BPT and MEx diagnostic diagrams, and the MZ relation as a function of emission line luminosity limits, is made publicly available.