« Low surface brightness galaxies in the era of deep large-sky surveys and artificial intelligence »
Low surface-brightness (LSB) galaxies, which are typically fainter than the night sky, contribute to the majority of the total number density of galaxies in the universe. Therefore, they are a crucial and powerful laboratory for testing our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. However, the extremely faint nature of these galaxies has long hindered in-depth studies of them, biasing our knowledge of galaxy physics towards only bright massive galaxies. With the advent of new, powerful instruments capable of carrying out deep, large sky surveys (e.g., Euclid, LSST), combined with the era of modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools, we are opening a new window into a comprehensive understanding of the LSB galaxies. In this talk, I will present our recent and ongoing works on LSB galaxies. This includes the development of a novel AI tool for the automatic identification and characterisation of LSB galaxies, investigating the role of environment in their evolution, their stellar population, and gas content. Additionally, I will also present some follow-up observing campaigns we did on extreme cases like ultra-diffuse and giant LSB galaxies.