Forgot your password?
Special ACKS Seminar: Dragan Huterer
Document Actions
ACKS Seminar: Brian Gerke (KIPAC, Stanford University)
| What | ACKS |
|---|---|
| When |
01 May 08 from 04:00 pm to 05:00 pm |
| Where | SLAC, 3rd Floor KAVLI Conf Room |
| Contact Name | Lukasz Stawarz |
| Contact Email | stawarz@slac.stanford.edu |
| Add event to calendar |
vCal (Windows, Linux)
iCal (Mac OS X)
|
Doublets and Pairs in the DEEP2 Survey: Why Dark Energy is Good for Astronomy
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey is the largest existing spectroscopic survey of galaxies at redshift near unity, with nearly 50,000 spectra now in hand. One of the main stated goals of DEEP2 is to probe the Dark Energy via the growth of large-scale structure in the Universe; however, the DEEP2 dataset has also enabled a spectacular range of astronomical investigations. In this talk, I will present the results from two such studies (with wildly different scientific content), both of which involve analysis of the well-known [O III] optical emission-line doublet. The first is a constraint on the time-evolution of the atomic fine-structure constant, measured via the splitting of the doublet. The second is an effort to constrain the rate of early-type galaxy mergers by identifying, via [O III] emission, a sample of Active Galactic Nuclei whose central supermassive black holes have been perturbed away from their galactic potential minima by a recent merger event. Neither of these projects was planned (or even imagined) before the data were in hand, but they were both made possible by the exceptional statistical power provided by the DEEP2 catalog. These are only two examples of the excellent non-cosmological science that is afforded by a large-survey-based approach to astronomy--of exactly the sort that is planned for upcoming Dark Energy experiments.
Special ACKS Seminar: Dragan Huterer