TBA

TBA

Fundamental questions remain unanswered in understanding galactic-scale star formation, despite many decades of investigation and progress. These include: how do stars cluster in galaxies, and how do these structures evolve in time? Do we actually have a `clustered' and `diffuse' mode of star formation? When structures remain bound (star clusters), how do their populations evolve? How are they related to the galactic-scale star formation? Is the stellar Initial Mass Function universal? How are popular star formation rate indicators affected by the recent star formation history of a galaxy? How are these effects impacting our understanding of the scaling laws of star formation with the gas reservoir? The answers to these questions inform our theories for the evolution of galaxies through cosmic times. Many of these questions are being addressed by recent projects that combine UV and high-angular resolution with the Hubble Space Telescope, and which I will describe together with the results they have obtained so far.

Our home Galaxy, the Milky Way, is our closest laboratory for understanding physical processes throughout the Universe. Submillimeter observations of the cool, dense gas and dust in our Milky Way provide insights on universal processes including how stars form in both 'regular' and 'extreme' environments and how gas is organized on galactic scales. On a tour through our Milky Way Laboratory, I will discuss 1) how we can use long, skinny molecular clouds, potential "Bones of the Milky Way," to trace our Galaxy's spiral structure, 2) how large surveys of our Galaxy have revealed that star clusters continue to grow even as they are forming, and 3) how observing the Central Molecular Zone (the inner few hundred parsecs of our Galaxy) can help us learn more about the conversion of gas into stars during the peak of cosmic star formation (z~2).

TBA

TBA

We investigate the origin and the fate of high-energy photons in blazar jets, by means of analytical theory and first-principles particle-in-cell (PIC) kinetic simulations. In magnetically-dominated jets, magnetic reconnection is often invoked as a mechanism to transfer the jet magnetic energy to the emitting particles, thus powering the observed non-thermal emission. With 2D and 3D PIC simulations, we show that magnetic reconnection in blazar jets satisfies all the basic conditions for the emission: extended non-thermal particle distributions (with power-law slope between -2 and -1), efficient dissipation and rough equipartition between particles and magnetic field in the emitting region. TeV photons emitted by the highest energy electrons accelerated by reconnection will interact in the intergalactic medium (IGM) with the extragalactic background light, producing a dilute beam of ultra-relativistic pairs. It is a matter of recent debate whether the energy of the pair beam is lost due to inverse Compton scattering off the CMB -- resulting in ~10-100 GeV photons -- or heats the IGM via collective plasma instabilities. The astrophysical stakes are very high because of the large amount of energy and extensive cosmic volume involved in this process. We study the relaxation of blazar-induced beams in the IGM, by means of 2D and 3D PIC simulations. We find that at most 10% of the beam energy is deposited into the IGM plasma, so that at least 90% of the beam energy will be ultimately re-processed in the multi-GeV band.

I will present current work on comparing GADGET+Sunrise hydrodynamic simulations with observations of IR-luminous galaxies at z~0.3-3. I will especially focus on the relative roles of stars and AGN in heating the dust, the role of merger stage on the emergent SED, and the most likely initial gas fractions of the merger progenitors. In all cases, I will compare the results of the simulations with earlier, more direct, measurements. I will address the successes and limitations of the current generation of hydrodynamic simulations.

Circumstellar disks provide the raw material and initial conditions for planet formation. Millimeter-wavelength interferometry is a powerful tool for studying gas and dust in planet-forming regions, and it is undergoing an immense leap in sophistication with the advent of the ALMA interferometer. I will discuss some ways in which we are using millimeter-wavelength interferometry to study the process of planet formation in circumstellar disks, with particular emphasis on the kinematics of turbulence in protoplanetary disks and the surprising presence of gas in debris disks around main-sequence stars.

Owing to several large surveys with new instruments on HST we are now able to measure the basic properties of galaxies over most of cosmic history. This talk will highlight one such survey, 3D-HST, which has obtained spectra and images of many thousands of faint galaxies. I will also discuss the next step, that is, how to reconstruct the histories of different kinds of galaxies from this wealth of data. This reconstruction has now been done for galaxies like the Milky Way, enabling us to look at "baby pictures" of galaxies like our own.

Infrared photometric surveys are discovering numerous quasars at z > 6.5, enabling absorption investigations of neutral Hydrogen and its associated heavy elements at the tail end of the reionization epoch. I will describe the status of my group's ongoing IR and optical spectroscopic surveys targeting metal pollution in the first few Gyr. Beginning with a systematic study of absorption candidates for "cold flows" at z~3, I will move on to describe a 100-sightline survey of circumgalactic MgII pollution with the Magellan/FIRE spectrometer, extending prior optical measurements (restricted to z<2) out to z~6.5. I will also describe our latest constraints on the CIV mass density and intergalactic carbon enrichment at z = 4.5-6.5. Finally, I will outline our first attempt at measuring actual chemical abundances in the z > 7 universe, and discuss their significance for reionization and the formation of the first stars.

I will present multi-wavelength (X-ray, optical, infrared, and radio) observations of clusters of galaxies, including in-depth study of nearby objects and a survey of distant systems. Cooling of the hot intracluster medium in cluster centers can feed the supermassive black holes in the cores of the dominant cluster galaxies leading to AGN outbursts. This AGN feedback can reheat the gas, stopping cooling and large amounts of star formation. Most relaxed, cool core clusters host powerful AGN in their central galaxies and these AGN can significantly affect the distribution of e.g., temperature and abundance on cluster scales. AGN heating can come in the form of shocks, buoyantly rising bubbles that have been inflated by radio jets and lobes, and sound wave propogation. Sloshing of the cluster gas, related to minor, off-center interactions with galaxy sub-clusters or groups also affects the distribution of temperature and abundance on large scales. This sloshing gas can interact with the AGN's radio-emitting jets and lobes causing them to bend. This bending is also found in AGN jets and lobes embedded in clusters undergoing major, head-on cluster, cluster mergers. Since this bending is a signature of interaction within clusters, bent, double-lobed AGN observed in the radio can be used as beacons for clusters of galaxies at high redshifts. I will describe our large sample of high-redshift, bent-double radio sources that were observed in the infrared with Spitzer and that have yielded approximately 200 new, distant clusters of galaxies with z > 0.7. These clusters will serve as important laboratories for studying galaxy evolution and cosmology.

The effective supply and retention of gas in shallow gravitational potentials is a problem with implications in a diverse set of astrophysical systems. In particular, the magnitude of gas flows into mature dwarf galaxies can have large impacts on the star formation histories in these systems. In this talk, computational techniques will be used to show how such such weakly bound gravitational structures might be able to accumulate gas effectively. The implications for star formation in dwarf galaxies after their incorporation into a larger host halo will be presented.

Observations of the sky are inherently a 2-dimensional measurement of flux density on the sphere of the sky. For astrophysical studies, however, one usually needs the knowledge of 3d positions, for example to convert an angle into a physical scale or a brightness into a luminosity. In the context of extragalactic surveys, distance or redshift information is usually done with "photometric redshifts", which rely on strong assumptions and often lead to problematic estimates. In this talk I will how it is possible to instead use clustering measurements and infer redshifts for any type of extragalactic sources. I will show applications of this "clustering-redshift" technique to various datasets at UV, optical, IR and radio wavelengths, and show a number of surprises.