Galaxies SIG Seminar

Disentangling Baryonic and Dark Matter Physics with the Smallest Galaxies

Speaker

Erin Kado-Fong (Stanford) 

Abstract

Low-mass “dwarf” galaxies, with masses less than around 10 percent that of the Milky Way, present both a puzzle and an opportunity for our understanding of dark matter and baryonic physics. Although they serve as an important testing ground for our understanding of dark matter, dwarfs’ shallow potential wells render them highly sensitive to baryonic processes such as star formation and stellar feedback.

Historically, our view of the dwarf galaxy population has been limited to our cosmic backyard; the current and upcoming generation of wide-field surveys are now at the cusp of unlocking a much broader holistic view of these low-mass galaxies. In my talk, I will demonstrate the power of our emerging population-level view of dwarf galaxies to measure and constrain the physics of galaxy evolution from the interstellar to cosmological scales, and discuss the ramifications of these findings on our understanding of the interplay between baryonic and dark sector physics in governing galaxy assembly.

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