Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Constraining the Cosmic Evolution of Environmental Quenching & Predicting Protocluster Populations

Baxter, Devontae, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Devontae Baxter is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the University of California, San Diego. Baxter will combine cutting-edge observations and state-of-the-art simulations of galaxy groups and clusters to determine what drives the suppression (or quenching) of star formation in satellite galaxies, and whether the process is different in the early cosmos. Baxter will also launch the Computational Astrophysics Research Preparation (CARP) program to provide prospective community college transfer students with i) the computational skills necessary to begin academic research and ii) relevant mentorship to aid in their transfer process and subsequent success at and beyond the four-year university. This project will combine large volume, high-resolution cosmological N-body simulations with observations from the most comprehensive spectroscopic and multi-passband imaging surveys of galaxy groups and clusters to (1) isolate the dominant quenching mechanism responsible for breaking the gas-star cycle in satellites of massive groups at z ~ 1; (2) place robust constraints on the halo-mass dependence of environmental quenching at z < 1; (3) constrain the redshift evolution of the quenching timescale for group and cluster populations over the last 8 billion years; and (4) make physically motivated predictions for the poorly constrained quiescent population of the progenitors of massive clusters – i.e. protoclusters. 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.