A key question for scientists is how galaxies - the building blocks of our Universe - were assembled. They must understand both how the various components of galaxies are physically organized currently, and how they have changed over time. This proposal seeks to understand the assembly of the most massive galaxies. The scientists are surveying the 100 most massive nearby galaxies to measure the detailed chemical composition and physical properties within each galaxy. They will create three-dimensional maps of the locations of stars and gas in each galaxy, how they are moving, and what their composition is. The velocities of the stars and gas will further enable the scientists to measure the amounts of invisible mass in black holes and dark matter in these galaxies. The combination of all this information provides important clues to when the galaxies started to form and how they changed over time. In addition, one PI is mentoring talented high school students and exposing them to cutting-edge science research. The other PI teaches inmates in New Jersey State Correctional Facilities through the Prison Teaching Initiative, providing basic math and science training to underserved incarcerated minorities.
This proposal seeks to elucidate the assembly history of massive galaxies. To achieve this goal, the proposers will investigate (1) the relationship of massive galaxies and their black holes and the possible black hole feedback; and (2) the stellar population properties, in particular the spread in initial mass function among the most massive galaxies. A robust way to study both questions is through stellar dynamical mass modeling. Existing uniform kinematics measurements from wide-format and sub-arcsec integral-field spectrographs will be used to model all of the dark components of the galaxies: their central black holes, dark matter halos, and low-mass stars. Additional extensive sets of multi-wavelength data will be used to study the galaxy profiles and their molecular gas, hot gas, and accretion onto the central black holes.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
