Wednesday, October 10, 2012
4:00 PM -
5:00 PM
Cahill, Hameetman Auditorium
Astronomy Colloquium
Series: Astronomy Colloquium Series
From the IMF to the S-Process in Early-Type Galaxies
Charlie Conroy,
UCSC,
Our understanding of the stellar populations of unresolved galaxies is fundamentally limited by our lack of knowledge of the stellar initial mass function (IMF), and its variation with environment and epoch. In this talk I will present a technique that provides direct measurements of the low-mass IMF (~0.1-1 Msun) in unresolved stellar systems. When this technique is applied to high-quality optical-NIR spectra of nearby early-type galaxies, evidence is found for an IMF that is substantially more "bottom-heavy" than the Galactic IMF. I will also discuss ongoing work aimed at measuring elemental abundances (including C, N, O, Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Sr, and Ba) of these galaxies, with the goal of constraining their formation histories.
Event Sponsors:
For more information, please contact Gina Armas by phone at 4671 or by email at [email protected] or visit http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~gma/colloquia.html.