Astro Seminar Series - VIA ZOOM

Peter uses computational statistics to study links between dark matter halo assembly, galaxy formation, and the growth of supermassive black holes. His research involves generating simulated universes for millions of different physical models, with the aim of constraining which physics best describes current observations and which new observations would best improve our current understanding of galaxy and black hole formation. These methods are especially powerful as they allow combining many disparate observations (across different redshifts, environments, and formation tracers) into a self-consistent description of the Universe.

Title and Abstract of Peter's talk:

Decoding Galaxy Formation Physics with the UniverseMachine

Abstract: I discuss new methods that allow computers to recover the underlying physics of galaxy formation using only galaxy observations and dark matter simulations, and show how these methods have already changed our understanding of galaxy formation physics (including why galaxies stop forming stars).  Basic extensions to the same techniques allow constraining internal galaxy processes, including coevolution between galaxies and supermassive black holes as well as time delays for supernova / GRB progenitors.  Finally, I discuss how these methods will benefit from the enormous amount of upcoming data in widefield (HETDEX, LSST, Euclid, WFIRST) and targeted (JWST, GMT) observations, as well as ways they can benefit observers, including making predictions for future telescopes (especially JWST) and testing which of many possible targeted observations would best constrain galaxy formation physics.

Would you like to join this Zoom seminar?  Please email Donna Hayes.