CAREER: Galactic Archeology: Understanding the Building Blocks of the Milky Way across Cosmic Time

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Wetzel and his student research team are working to understand how galaxies like our Milky Way (MW) formed. Through this analysis they will they gain an in-depth understanding of the basic building blocks that formed the MW. Catalogs derived from the simulations will be made available to help optimize observational surveys of the MW. The team will develop and disseminate their interactive GalaxyLab program and use it to teach an undergraduate computational astrophysics class. The team will use cosmological simulations to track the population of stars formed in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the MW disk and compare it to stars stripped from companion dwarf galaxies. This project builds on the Latte suite of cosmological simulations, which uses the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) physics model. The new simulations will have a large dynamic range and will resolve GMCs and ultra-faint satellite dwarf galaxies. The team will investigate (1) the origin of the alpha-element bimodality in the abundance distribution of MW stars, (2) the lifetimes, dynamical evolution, and elemental abundances of GMCs and their stellar associations, and (3) "chemical tagging," where the 3D formation history of the MW is reconstructed from trends observed in the distribution of stellar elemental abundances. GalaxyLab will be distributed as a series of modules in an open-source Jupyter Python notebook. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.