The baryonic and chemical content of disc galaxies: A key to galaxy formation

Projektinformationen

BACON

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 10884

Startdatum 1 Dezember 2005

Enddatum 30 November 2007

Finanziert unter

• Human resources and Mobility in the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration "Structuring the European Research Area" under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006

Gesamtkosten € 0,00

EU-Beitrag € 157 464,00

Koordiniert durch

UNIVERSITY OF TURKU
Finland

Ziel

The presently favoured Cold Dark Matter cosmology still faces serious discrepancies with observations on galactic scales. Baryon physics can give a crucial contribution to improve the predictions of cosmological simulations. A key to understand galaxy form ation and evolution is to measure the baryonic content of galaxies: compared to the universal baryon fraction, it reveals if galaxies expel large amounts of the available baryons via stellar energy feedback. Disc galaxies are especially interesting because feedback is fundamental to explain their sizes and angular momenta. Also, the mass of baryons in discs is crucial to derive the density profiles of dark matter haloes, a puzzle for current cosmology. To know the mass of baryons in galaxies we must know th e mass-to-light (M/L) ratio of their luminous stellar component. Accurate data are available for the stellar populations in the Solar Neighbourhood, and we will interpret them with chemo-photometric models to derive the stellar M/L ratio in the local Galac tic Disc. We will then apply the models to external disc galaxies, and by combining chemo-photometric and dynamical analysis we will investigate the stellar M/L ratio as a function of Hubble type, of galaxy mass and in high vs. low surface brightness discs . We will infer how star formation and feedback work in different objects, so that we can include realistic baryon physics in cosmological simulations and improve our understanding of galaxy formation. Our chemical models will also predict the helium conte nt of nearby stars, and the relative helium-to-metal enrichment rate DY/DZ. We can also probe this quantity observationally, from the colour-magnitude diagram of a large sample of nearby low Main Sequence stars. From DY/DZ we can then infer the primordial helium abundance Yp, an important probe of cosmology and Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

Wissenschaftliches Gebiet

• natural sciences › chemical sciences › inorganic chemistry › noble gases
• natural sciences › physical sciences › astronomy › physical cosmology › big bang
• natural sciences › physical sciences › astronomy › astrophysics › black holes
• natural sciences › physical sciences › astronomy › astrophysics › dark matter
• natural sciences › physical sciences › astronomy › physical cosmology › galaxy evolution

Schlüsselbegriffe

• Galaxy formation and evolution
• Milky Way
• dark matter
• helium abundance
• stellar populations

Programm/Programme

• FP6-MOBILITY - Human resources and Mobility in the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration "Structuring the European Research Area" under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006

Thema/Themen

• MOBILITY-2.1 - Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (EIF)

Aufforderung zur Vorschlagseinreichung

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-5
Andere Projekte für diesen Aufruf anzeigen

Finanzierungsplan

EIF - Marie Curie actions-Intra-European Fellowships

Koordinator

UNIVERSITY OF TURKU

• EU-Beitrag: Keine Daten
• Adresse: Väisäläntie 20 ; TURKU ; Finnland
• Gesamtkosten: Keine Daten