Physics/Astronomy Colloquium: Modeling Irregularities in Galaxy Rotation

Dr. Brian Zanger (Swarthmore College) will present his work titled "Modeling Irregularities in Galaxy Rotation". The talk is open to all Lafayette affiliates, but will assume some background physics knowledge. Please join us for refreshments starting at 4:15pm.

Abstract:

Modern integral field spectrographs can obtain hundreds of spectra across the entire faces of thousands of distant galaxies, allowing us an unprecedented look into their inner workings. By using the Doppler shift information from emission and absorption lines, we can see a detailed picture of how a galaxy's gas and stars are moving. I use this type of spatially-resolved spectral data from the SDSS-MaNGA survey to study irregularities in the rotational patterns of barred spiral galaxies, developing statistical models to accurately describe the distortions caused by galactic bars. I have produced models of over 1000 barred galaxies, enabling me to study the effects of bars on galactic structure, stellar populations, and galaxy evolution. I will also discuss my work on kinematic weak lensing, the modeling of gravitational distortions in galaxy velocity fields created by the dark matter halos of galaxy clusters. I am continuing these projects with undergraduate researchers interested in astronomical data analysis.