When:
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT
Where: Technological Institute, F160, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact:
Liz Lwanga
(847) 491-3645
Group: Physics and Astronomy Astrophysics Seminars
Category: Academic
Title: The Most Metal-poor Galaxies at High Redshift
Speaker: Ryan Cooke, University of California, Santa Cruz
Host: Claude-André Faucher-Giguère
Abstract: The birth of the first stars arguably marks one of the most important physical and chemical transformations of the Universe. These stars kick-started reionization and synthesised the first metals. However, despite their impact, we still know very little about them. Even though no primordial star has yet been identified, we can start to understand their properties by studying the relative abundances of the elements that were made during their lives. In this talk, I will present the results from a suite of model calculations that follow the enrichment of the first stars. These minihalo models predict the chemical signature that is borne into the second generation of stars, and provide a new perspective on the formation of carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars. I will also present the latest results from my survey to find the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha galaxies (1/1000 of solar metallicity) at redshift z~3. I show that some of these systems may have been enriched solely by the first generation of stars.
Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics