Executive Summary : | One of the main drivers of galaxy evolution is interaction/merger between galaxies. Theoretically, such interactions are expected in all galaxy mass ranges. Their effect on massive galaxies (stellar mass greater than 10^10 solar mass) in the local universe has been studied extensively and shown that they create tidal features, trigger star formation activity and affect the structure and dynamics of galaxies. However, similar studies of low mass galaxies (stellar mass less than 10^10 solar mass) are rare. Dwarf galaxies are the dominant galaxy population at all redshifts and majority of mergers are expected to be between them. Again, as low mass galaxies have low tidal effects, it is not clear whether their interactions can induce star formation, morphological changes etc as observed for massive galaxies. Hence it is essential to understand the effect of interactions in the evolution of low mass galaxies. Most of the on-going/planned systematic studies to understand the assembly process of dwarf galaxies concentrate on the higher end (10^9 solar mass) of the low mass regime and studies of lower mass galaxies are very less. In this context, we have planned a systematic multi-wavelength study of interacting low mass galaxies (in the mass range 10^(7-9) solar mass) in low density environment, and compare with the properties of non-interacting low mass galaxies using proposal based imaging data obtained from Ultraviolet imaging Telescope (UVIT) on-board Astrosat, 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope and archival data from GALEX and GMRT. Apart from the already available data, we have allocated observing time in the upcoming observing cycles of UVIT and Gemini-North telescope. In future we also plan to obtain new imaging and spectroscopic data and combine archival data for our study. The main goals of this study are to (i) estimate star formation rate, identify recent star forming regions up to smaller scales, their spatial distribution and compare them in interacting and non-interacting systems using UV data (ii) identify stellar counterpart (low surface brightness tidal features) of HI bridge and morphology of companion galaxy in the case of interacting dwarf galaxies using deep optical observations, (iii) compare the integrated star formation rates and spatial distribution of star forming regions from the Halpha and FUV (while H$\alpha$ traces the most recent star formation, FUV traces the star formation a few hundred Myr ago); to understand the trigger of the star formation, (iv) estimate star formation histories of these galaxies and check for correlated star formation peaks in the pair and finally (v) compare the observed properties with predictions from recent simulations of dwarf galaxies. This study will provide valuable insights to our understanding of the hierarchical galaxy assembly process. |