YCAA Seminar: “Galaxy Cluster Evolution Over the Past 10 Billion Years” - Michael McDonald, MIT Kavli Institute

Event time: 
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 - 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Hours of operation: 

Coffee/tea and cookies will be in the coffee lounge of 52 Hillhouse starting at 2:00 PM. Bring your own mug if you have!

Location: 
Watson (), A-51 See map
60 Sachem Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Galaxy Cluster Evolution Over the Past 10 Billion Years

In this talk, I will summarize recent results from the South Pole Telescope 2500 deg^2 survey. This mass-limited survey has discovered hundreds of new galaxy clusters at 0 < z < 1.7, allowing an unprecedented view of galaxy cluster evolution. Using follow-up observations from Spitzer, Hubble, Chandra, XMM-Newton, Magellan, VLT, ALMA, ATCA, and Gemini, we are able to study the evolution of the stars, gas, and dark matter in these massive systems. Based on these data, we constrain the evolution of cluster galaxies, the central AGN, the cooling ICM, the heavy metal abundance of the ICM, the dynamical state of the cluster, and various other cluster properties. Looking forward, I will present several new and ongoing surveys which will dramatically change the landscape of galaxy cluster research in coming years.