Kate Whitaker (UMass Amherst, US)
When the Universe was merely three billion years old, about half of massive galaxies had already formed the bulk of their stars and new star formation plummeted. How these ‘red and dead’ (quiescent) galaxies quench at such early times remains a puzzle, as their dark matter halos contain large gas reservoirs. This gas should cool efficiently, sustaining star formation over long periods. In this talk, I will review the recent innovative techniques developed to probe the physical properties of early quiescent galaxies, and the key observations constraining their formation histories. I will present promising paths forward towards solving this puzzle that leverage strong gravitational lensing and the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope and ALMA, as well as a look toward the future with exciting new public facilities.
As an observational extragalactic astronomer, Kate Whitaker studies galaxy formation and evolution over the past twelve billion years of cosmic time. In addition to her position as an Assistant Professor in the Astronomy Department at UMass Amherst, she is also an associate faculty at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Whitaker's research group actively collaborate with DAWN, working towards pushing our detection of quiescent “red and dead” galaxies even earlier in time (within a billion years of the Big Bang itself!). Their goal is to understand the detailed physics of the structures and underlying stellar populations of these early massive galaxies.
*Google Meet (acesso com e-mail USP): https://meet.google.com/pcw-gmem-jyi
Youtube (acesso livre): https://www.youtube.com/c/AstronomiaIAGUSP/live