Physics & Astronomy - Astronomy Seminar - Alexandra Pope, UMass Amherst

Title: "The Rise of Dust: Completing our Census of Cosmic Star Formation"

May 7, 2018
1 pm - 2 pm
Location
Wilder 202
Sponsored by
Physics & Astronomy Department
Audience
Public
More information
Tressena Manning
603-646-2854

Abstract: While UV surveys have mapped out the unobscured star formation rate density over cosmic time, our observations of obscured star formation, which dominates the energetics, remain incomplete. The dust content of the Universe is expected to evolve with redshift, but the fraction of star formation that is obscured by dust for a given stellar mass is surprisingly constant out to cosmic noon. This begs for deeper observations of dust obscured star formation pushing to higher redshifts over a range of stellar masses.  I will present new observations with the Large Millimeter Telescope including a 1.1 mm survey of the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields. The clusters act as cosmic telescopes to amplify lower-luminosity galaxies, probing further down the millimeter luminosity function than possible with blank-field observations. In this survey, we detected tons of dust in a lower mass, very distant galaxy which complicates our picture of dust in the early Universe. I will discuss the synergy between the wide surveys with the LMT and targeted programs with ALMA. Finally I will introduce TolTEC, a revolutionary new camera for the LMT, and the public legacy surveys that will be completed from 2019-2021. These surveys will make a complete census of dust-obscured activity in the Universe.

Location
Wilder 202
Sponsored by
Physics & Astronomy Department
Audience
Public
More information
Tressena Manning
603-646-2854