Why Do Galaxies Stop Making Stars?
| Date/Time: | Monday, 08 Apr 2019 from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm |
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| Location: | Phys 0003 |
| Phone: | 515-294-5441 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Abstract: It has long been known that many massive galaxies in today's Universe show low or vanishing levels of star formation activity. Several promising explanations have been proposed that explain these observations, but a number of theoretical puzzles remain. The theoretical challenge has deepened with recent observations of passive galaxies at earlier times when the Universe was merely a few billion years old. At such early times, strong gas accretion from the cosmic environment should have sustained a vigorous star formation activity. I will discuss recent insights based on ultra-high resolution, cosmological simulations and present evidence that the star formation activity is dictated both by processes operating within galaxies as well as by their cosmological environment. This new perspective aligns well with recent empirical approaches and clarifies the role of internal and external processes in regulating star formation in galaxies.
Bio: Robert Feldmann, Dr. sc. ETH, is a theoretical astrophysicist focused on understanding and modeling the evolution of galaxies. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
Dr. Feldmann received his PhD from ETH Zurich. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and an associate fellowship of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. Subsequently, he joined the University of California, Berkeley, as a Hubble Fellow.
His main research interests include the formation and evolution of galaxies in a young Universe, the physics of the interstellar medium, and the application of data science methodology to astrophysics. His areas of methodological expertise include high performance computing, Bayesian statistical modeling, and computational statistics.