DARK Summer Student Program
Join us in welcoming a diverse group of bright young minds to our summer student program, led by Professor Charles Steinhardt at DARK. This year, we are thrilled to host an inspiring mix of local and international students who are eager to explore and expand their horizons. Get to know these talented individuals and discover the fascinating topics they are studying below!
Ei Kyaw is working on a research project that investigates the origin of turbulence in the cold gas of star-forming dwarf galaxies in the nearby Universe.
Otto is working on the NIRSpec multi-object spectrograph (MOS) onboard the JWST that has revolutionized our understanding of the early universe galaxies, their stellar populations, chemical and dust content, and their evolution from the bursty and chaotic early phase to the more mature galaxies we observe in the local universe. Most of the JWST NIRSpec MOS spectroscopic studies thus far have been limited to spatially unresolved studies, achieved by stacking the spectra on the spatial axis to maximize the signal to noise ratio (S/N). However, most of this spectroscopic data has high enough S/N to accommodate spatially resolved studies. In this project, we aim to investigate the publicly available NIRSpec MOS spectroscopy to i) identify the galaxies that can be resolved into multiple spatially resolved spectra, ii) measure spatially resolved emission line fluxes for these galaxies, iii) use their spatially resolved line fluxes to map the spatial distribution of their star formation and other inferable properties such as dust reddening and gas-phase metallicity. This will enable us to study the morphological assembly of galaxies in the early universe, and answer questions such as: i) do galaxies form inside-out or outside-in? ii) at which radii the bursty mode of star formation dominates, as opposed to the smooth mode of star formation, and iii) are the established metallicity and dust reddening gradients inferred in the local universe persist in the young early universe galaxies?
Lucas Hallgren (Denmark) and supervisor Radek are working on a project about describing the effect of the distribution of dust in galaxies, called reddening. The dust makes stars and other objects look dimmer than they actually are. It is important to correct for this in measurements of Type Ia Supernovea that are used to determine distances in the Universe.
Jacob is working on a project studying the morphology of high redshift galaxies and their star formation histories
Preston is reevaluating recently proposed dark energy models using new BAO data from DESI 2024. He hopes to develop more efficient statistical analysis methods for evaluating the likelihood of dark energy models, and aim to use these methods to create a model of his own.
Emma is working on the quenching mechanisms of galaxies are not yet fully understood. Post-starburst (PSB) galaxies provide one explanation for the rapid transition between blue, star-forming and red, quiescent galaxies. Contrary to the consensus in the field, recent studies do, however, suggest that PSB spectra may be produced by multiple distinct mechanisms (Steinhardt, 2024; Pawlik, 2019). This project will examine whether multiple types of PSB galaxies actually exist, i.e. whether the properties of PSB galaxies are multimodal, and if so, how the spectral characteristics, merger histories and quenching directions differ between the groups.