Thesis Defense: Hot Gas at High Redshift: Pathfinder Studies for Next Generation X-ray Observatories

Speaker: Anthony Flores (KIPAC) In Person and zoom

Ph.D. Candidate: Anthony Flores
Research Advisor: Steve Allen

Zoom Link: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/95350946536
Zoom Password: Email physicsstudentservices@stanford.edu for password.

The hot, diffuse intracluster medium (ICM) permeates the deep gravitational potential wells of galaxy clusters and serves as a window inside these massive, dark matter dominated structures. Radiating primarily at X-ray wavelengths, the ICM encodes the billions of years of cosmic history experienced by these systems, in particular the everlasting tug-of-war between gravitational forces and energetic feedback effects from star formation and supermassive black hole/AGN activity within the cluster’s own population of galaxies. In this talk, I will provide examples for how spatially resolved measurements of ICM density, thermodynamics and chemistry for systems at increasingly high redshift provide key constraints on models of cluster evolution in the context of these feedback processes. I will detail recent efforts to provide a more robust statistical description of the various foregrounds and backgrounds seen by our X-ray satellite telescopes, and reveal how we can apply these methods to studies of objects that have been jointly observed with our current flagship missions (Chandra and XMM-Newton) to best model the ICM in low signal-to-noise regimes. The studies presented here will consider some of the highest redshift galaxy clusters for which this type of joint data is available, and I will comment on how they are informing the best ways to extend these types of evolutionary studies using the next generation of X-ray telescopes.