Cosmic evolution of radio sources in ATLAS

The Australian Telescope Large Area Survey (ATLAS) observes seven square degrees of sky down to 10 ˜í¬¿Jy beam\\(^{‚Äöv†v¿1}\\) at 1.4 GHz using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The survey covers two fields to minimise cosmic variance; the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) and the European Large Area ISO Survey - South 1 (ELAIS). My PhD focusses specifically on the cosmic evolution of radio sources in ATLAS. We have used the AAOmega spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) to measure 466 new spectroscopic redshifts in ATLAS. We have used both the spectra obtained from the AAT, and other multiwavelength ancillary data available in these fields to discriminate between starforming galaxies and AGN. Using these data we have studied the radio luminosity function for both star-forming galaxies and AGN. We have also identified and analysed wide-angle tailed galaxies in ATLAS and discovered a ‚Äöv†¬¿12 Mpc largescale structure associated with a wide-angle tailed galaxy in ELAIS at z‚Äöv†¬¿0.2. Using deep far- infrared data from the Far-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (FIDEL) we were able to study the far-infrared radio correlation in the Extended-CDFS and we found no evidence for evolution out to redshifts of ‚Äöv†¬¿3.