Astronomy 597a

Exploring the High Redshift Universe

Instructor: Caryl Gronwall

Office: 417B Davey, Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 2 -- 3 p.m. or whenever you can find me!

Background Reading:

Observations of the High Redshift Universe by Richard Ellis, from "First Light in the Universe", Saas-Fee Advanced Course 36
Galaxies in the Universe by Sparke and Gallagher
Galactic Astronomy by Binney & Merrifield (1998) and the previous edition by Mihalas & Binney (1981).
Galaxies in the Universe and Galactic Astronomy are on reserve in the Science Library.
Also the lecture notes for Astronomy 504 and Astronomy 480 might be useful.

Course Syllabus in PDF format.

Astronomy Department Integrity Policy

Schedule

January 22, Lecture 1 January 22, Brief overview of morphological classification and galaxy properties.
January 29,Spectrophotometric Synthesis Models (discussion led by Anand & Amanda)

• Bruzual & Charlot 2003, MNRAS, 344, 1000
• Maraston 2005, MNRAS, 362, 799
• Anand's slides
• Amanda's slides

February 5, Semi-Analytic Models (discussion led by Michael & Jian)

• Kauffmann et al. 1993, MNRAS, 264, 201
• Sommerville & Primack 1999, MNRAS, 310, 1087
• Croton et al. 2006, MNRAS, 264, 201
• Mike & Jian's slides

February 12, Intermediate Redshift Surveys (z < 2) and Evolution in Luminosity (discussion led by Anand & Jianfeng & Cristian)

• Daddi et al. 2004, ApJ, 617, 746
• Reddy et al. 2005, ApJ,633, 748
• Faber et al. 2005, astro-ph/050644 see also Davis et al 2002 astro-ph/0209419 for an overview of the DEEP2 survey.
• Jianfeng's slides
• Anand's slides
• Cristian's slides

February 19, Evolution in mass (discussion led by Amanda & Cristian)

• Bundy et al. 2006, ApJ, 651, 120
• Treu et al. 2005, ApJ, 633, 174
• Cristian's slides
• Amanda's slides

February 26, Star-formation/metallicity history (discussion led by Bin & Jianfeng & Chris)

• Schmitt et al. 2006, ApJ, 643, 1. See also Section 3.3 in the Ellis review paper (listed at the top of the page.)
• Hopkins & Bascom 2006, ApJ, 651, 142. Note this paper relies heavily on an earlier paper by Hopkins 2004, ApJ, 615, 209
• Erb et al. 2006, ApJ, 644, 813
• Jianfeng's slides
• Chris' slides
• Bin's slides

March 5, Evolution of morphology, merger rates, & galaxy sizes (discussion led by Judy & Stephen)

• Papovich et al. 2005, ApJ, 631, 101
• Lotz et al, 2006, astro-ph/0602088
• Judy's slides
• Stephen's slides

March 19, Evolution in environmental effects (discussion led by Peter & Judy)

• Cooper et al. 2006, MNRAS 370, 198
• Postman et al. 2005, ApJ, 623, 721
• Judy's slides
• Peter's slides

March 26, Lyman-break galaxies (discussion led by Bin & Jason)

• Giavalisco 2002, ARAA, 40, 579. This is a long paper, so only one paper this week!
• Jason & Bin's slides

April 2, Ly-alpha Emitters and Probing the Epoch of Reionization (discussion led by Steve M. & Jason)

• Kashikawa et al. 2006, ApJ, 648, 7
• Bouwens & Illingworth, Nature, 443, 189. Please read the supplementary information as well (available from the Nature web site).
• Jason's slides
• Steve's slides

April 9, N-body models of galaxy formation (discussion led by Michael & Chris)

• Governato et al. 2007, MNRAS, 374, 1479
• Meza et al. 2003, ApJ, 590, 619
• Chris & Michael's slides

April 16, Square Kilometer Array & Atacama Large Millimeter Array (discussion led by Stephen & Steve B.)

• Ch. 7 from "Science with the Square Kilometer Array" by Furlanetto & Briggs. You can see the rest of the chapters here.
• Science with ALMA. This is long, so concentrate on Section 1 & Sections 2.1 through 2.4 & Section 6.
• SKA website
• ALMA website
• Steve's slides
• Stephen's slides

April 23, Large Synoptic Survey Telescooe (LSST) & Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT/GMT) (discussion led by Steve B. & Peter)

• GMT Science Case, concentrate on Sections 3-6.
• Towards a Design Reference Mission for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. This is very long, concentrate on Section 7, 9.2, & 9.3. Think about other questions relating to galaxy evolution one could answer using LSST data that AREN'T discussed in this document! Penn State is a member of the LSST consortium.
• LSST website
• TMT website
• GMT website
• Steve's slides
• Peter's slides

April 30, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) (discussion led by Jian & Steve M.)

• Gardner et al. 2006, SpSciRev, 123, 485
• This is a really long paper! Concentrate on Sections 1 -3 (science goals for JWST related to this course) and Sections 6.1 & 6.5 (observatory and instrumentation). You can skip the rest of Section 6 and Sections 4 & 5.
• Also check out the JWST website
• Jian's slides
• Steve's slides

Caryl Gronwall
Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics
Pennsylvania State University
525 Davey Lab
University Park, PA 16802
caryl@nospam.astro.psu.edu remove "nospam" to send me an email!
814-865-2918