~0.5 million fibre hours
Design accurate as of December 2023
The current survey design for WAVES-Deep (identical to the GAMA G23 region), covers a total of ~50deg2, to a selection depth of Zmag < 21.0 and upper photometric redshift cut of zphoto < 0.8.
The survey will probe SDSS/GAMA-like population statistics out to z~0.8, observing ~0.7 million galaxies (greater than an order of magnitude larger sample size than current surveys of comparable depth). All regions are designed to fall within the Euclid, KiDS-S/HSC/LSST, GALEX and H-ATLAS observations to provide UV – FIR imaging for all 1M galaxies. WAVES-deep-G23 will be aligned with the ASKAP-DINGOS deep field and we align WAVES-deepDrill with the LSST deep-drill fields to provide synergy with contemporary deep imaging surveys, and to maximise legacy value.
WAVES-Deep will target galaxies down to ~109.5M☉ and identify ~40,000 groups out to z~0.8, probing the evolution of stellar mass and large scale structure, and forming the definitive survey of galaxy evolution over the last 8Gyr. We will obtain unprecedented completeness at these epochs (>95%) enabling the robust identification of both groups and pair systems. Key science goals are: i) the evolution of the halo mass function and galaxy properties as a function of environment from the identification of large scale structure, ii) the evolution of stellar mass in the Universe, probing both merger rates and star-formation over an extensive redshift baseline, iii) in combination with Euclid, the evolution of structure in galaxies via the deconvolution of bulges and discs and the evolution of the mass size relation out to z~0.8, iv) the evolution of energy via full SED analysis of all 1 million WAVES-Deep galaxies, and v) the evolution of HI in combination with ASKAP-DINGO.
Synergy with ASKAP and eROSITA will produce long lasting legacy science, with WAVES-Deep providing key environmental metrics, confused source identification and stacking input catalogues, allowing key science to be fully exploited from these radio and X-ray surveys.