The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites all to a colloquium featuring Dr. Tom Quinn, Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. Dr. Quinn will present his talk, “The Cosmological Context of Star Formation”, Tuesday, March 21 at 4:10 p.m. in Webster 17.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: On the molecular cloud scale, star formation is a very complicated process that
involves gravitational collapse, radiative transfer and magnetic fields on sub‐parsec
scales. On the other hand, there are a number of observed relationships between star
formation and galactic and cosmic environment such as star formation rate ‐
molecular surface density relationship in disk galaxies, the stellar mass ‐ halo mass
relationship, and the evolution of the star formation rate over time.
Modeling these relationships therefore requires simulations of enormous dynamic
range and well motivated prescriptions for the star formation physics that is still
unresolved. Here, I will describe techniques for capturing this dynamic range, and
models for star formation and its interaction with the interstellar medium. I will also
describe recent successes in understanding star formation histories as function
galactic size, merger history and cosmic time.
