Subject: [Depfis] Mini Course 2006 Lenac-IAFE: The Formation of Galaxies (fwd)

From: Susana Landau <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:45:19 -0300 (ART)

Queria pedirles que me ayuden a difundir por email la siguiente einformacion:

La semana del 6 al 10 de Noviembre se llevara a cabo el Mini Curso sobre 
Formacion de Galaxias dictado por el Dr. Tom Theuns de la Universidad de 
Durham. La fecha, hora y programa de  los cursos (incluyendo material de 
lectura) podra ser consultado a partir del 23 de Octubre en la pagina: 
http://www.iafe.uba.ar/astronomia/extrag/html/cursos.html.

*Los interesados enviar un mensaje a [email-masked].*

Gracias

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The formation of galaxies

The Hubble Deep Field
(http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1996/01/images/a/formats/large_web.jpg)
shows in a glance the spectacular variety of shapes, sizes, and
colours, that galaxies may have. Why this large variety? Which
processes are responsible for shaping galaxies? How did the Milky Way
galaxy look like at redshift 1? And when did its first stars form?

For years astronomers studied galaxies in order to infer cosmological
parameters. This is in fact very hard: although it is true that the
cosmological parameters affect how galaxies form, there are many other
complex and poorly understood physical processes that ultimately
determine a galaxy's properties. Now that the cosmological parameters
are better constrained, we can turn the problem on its head, and try to
understand which processes are ultimately responsible for creating the
population of galaxies that is observed. Clearly this is a very
ambitious project! In three lectures I hope I can illustrate some o
the exciting problems in this field, and illustrate some of the
techniques presently used.

I will start by giving a brief overview of the wealth of data we
currently have on galaxies, from where stars and molecular clouds form
in nearby galaxies, to the clustering of galaxies, and how these
properties change as we examine galaxies at higher redshifts. As in
many branches of astronomy we need to be careful about interpreting the
data, and worry about selection effects.

The second part is theory, and I'll review the essential ingredients we
need to understand how the dark haloes of galaxies condense out
initially small perturbations, and how the baryons that will form the
stars behave, including discussions on cooling and instabilities if
time permits. I will also discuss so called semi-analytical models, that
parametrise some of the remaining uncertainties.

As in many other branches of physics, numerical simulations have
revolutionised the way we can examine how realistic our theories are.
I will discuss and compare the two current most popular numerical
techniques, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and Adaptive Mesh
Refinement (AMR), contrasting their strengths and weaknesses.  Finally
I'll present our current set of numerical simulations, called
Galaxy-Intergalactic Medium Interaction Calculation (GIMIC) and
(somewhat modest) Overwhelmingly Large Simulations (OWLS), and how you
can get involved.