CAREER: Constraining the Chemical Evolution of Galaxies with MaNGA

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

The team will investigate the abundance of an element, oxygen, commonly found in nearby galaxies with star-studded disks of gas. Over time, the gas in a galaxy is chemically enriched by successive generations of stars. Oxygen is used to trace how this "pollution" varies within a galaxy and from one galaxy to another. This information will help solve the important problem of how galaxies evolve. Senior team members will train junior members. The team will also develop a hands-on exhibit for a science museum. The innovative exhibit will mimic the research equipment and use custom software to demonstrate the research technique. In a tour de force, the team will use a cutting-edge observing technique - multi-fiber spectroscopy - to measure oxygen variations within about 3600 galaxies from the just-started survey for Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA). The team's specific goals are to (1) quantify the oxygen gradients, (2) study their relationships to the galaxies' physical properties, (3) study how winds from a galaxy redistribute its oxygen, and (4) search for the abrupt falloffs in oxygen that signal accretion of relatively pristine gas. This research will provide insights into the physical processes that drive chemical enrichment. Those insights will, in turn, lead to important improvements in theorists' simulations of how galaxies evolve.