Pedro Cataldi

Pedro Cataldi

I am a Research Associate at the Instituto de Astronomía of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IA-UNAM) in Mexico City. My research focuses on using numerical simulations to study galaxy formation, galaxy sizes, and large-scale structure. I am also a member of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).

Galaxy Formation and Evolution: From Cosmic Dawn to the LSST Era

Date:

In this seminar, I will present three recent works (Cataldi et al. 2026a, 2026b, and Cataldi et al., submitted) dedicated to the study of galaxy formation and evolution using cosmological simulations and their connection with observations. First, I will discuss the origin of the compact galaxies discovered by JWST at high redshifts. In this work, we investigate a possible formation channel for these systems and the evolution of the size–mass relation during the epoch of reionization. In the second part, I will present the development and validation of a technique to estimate the halo occupation distribution (HOD) using photometric information, with the aim of adapting it to the LSST survey of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Finally, I will show recent results on dust attenuation in galaxies using the TNG50 cosmological simulation and radiative transfer with SKIRT, assessing its ability to reproduce the observed scaling relations.