Veronika Dornan is a final-year PhD candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University. Her research uses observations of galaxies' globular star cluster systems as tracers of their evolutionary histories. She is particularly interested in studying the globular cluster system mass - halo mass scaling relation and understanding what drives this relation from dwarf galaxies to massive ellipticals galaxies.
Title: The Evolution of Galaxies as Told through Their Globular Cluster Systems
Abstract: How do you piece together the evolutionary history of a galaxy when we are limited to observations on human timescales? A long-living, luminous, and numerous tracer of evolution is needed, one which can be found in almost all galaxies. Globular star clusters are some of the oldest structures in galaxies and can be excellent tracers of a galaxy’s complex merger history. The strong, linear relationship between the mass of galaxy’s globular cluster system (GCS) and the mass of its dark matter halo has been known for several decades and has been found to be consistent for nearly all galaxies which have been investigated. However, at extremely high and low host galaxy masses, scatter begins to increase, and the behaviour of this scaling relation becomes less well understood. In this talk I will discuss the work I have done to determine extragalactic GCS properties to better constrain the drivers of this scaling relation, what this can tell us about galaxy and GCS evolution, and what the next steps in this field are.
Location Information
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON, CA N2L 3G1
