The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship for Dr. Kyle Brian Westfall to work with Dr. Marc A. W. Verheijen at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, a part of the University of Groningen, in Groningen, The Netherlands.
The PI will use spectroscopic observations that allow him to measure the motions, or velocity distribution, of stars and gas in spiral galaxies many millions of light-years from the Sun. These galaxies ? very reminiscent of our own Milky Way Galaxy ? have been a fundamental phenomenon for much of the age of the Universe. Yet, the current physical paradigm used to describe structure formation since the Big Bang are unable to accurately reproduce the well-regulated scaling relations observed in spiral galaxies. The observations and measurements made by the PI and his collaborators constrain how the structure and mass components (stars, gas, dust, and dark matter) relate to the internal dynamics, and how these relations can establish the empirical regularity of spiral galaxies. In particular, he will explore how disks are ?heated? via secular processes, the stability of disks against perturbations such as stellar bars and spiral arms, the relative contributions of dark and luminous matter as a function of galaxy type, and how dynamical processes can regulate star formation in galaxy disks. These measurements will provided critical constraints for refinement of our understanding of how galaxies like the Milky Way were formed and project their future within the larger context of cosmic evolution.
