Simulating the physics and mass assembly of distant galaxies out toz∼ 6 with the E-ELT

One of the main scientific goals of the future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be to understand the mass assembly process in galaxies as a function of cosmic time. To this aim, a multi-object, adaptive optics (AO)-assisted integral field spectrograph will be required to map the physical and chemical properties of very distant galaxies. In this paper, we examine the ability of such an instrument to obtain spatially resolved spectroscopy of a large sample of massive (0.1 ≤ M stellar ≤ 5 × 10 11 M ⊙ ) galaxies at 2 ≤ z 5) redshift bin. We find that a survey of N gal galaxies that fulfil the range of scientific goals can be achieved with an ∼90-night programme on the E-ELT, provided a multiplex capability M ∼ N gal /8.