Letters of Intent received in 2015

LoI 2017-285
The Role of Gas in Galaxy Dynamics

Date: 2 October 2017 to 6 October 2017
Category: Non-GA Symposium
Location: Qawra, Malta
Contact: Victor Debattista (vpdebattista@uclan.ac.uk)
Coordinating division: Division J Galaxies and Cosmology
Other divisions: Division H Interstellar Matter and Local Universe
Co-Chairs of SOC: Victor P. Debattista (University of Central Lancashire)
Elena D'Onghia (University of Wisconsin)
Co-Chairs of LOC: Kris Zarb-Adami (University of Malta)
Charles Sammut (University of Malta)

 

Topics

• The circulation of gas in galaxies (cold, hot accretion, feedback)
• Gas role in disk galaxies (spiral structures, warps, haloes)
• Gas as dynamical tracer at low redshift (gas as tracer of black holes)
• Scaling relations of galaxies at high redshift as compared to low redshift
• Gas in galaxy mergers (slow rotators, fast rotators)
• Gas in the Milky Way (cool, warm and hot phases of gas, the life cycle of GMC)
• Quenching of galaxies
• Gas and Satellite Galaxies: when galaxies lose their gas in different environment

 

Rationale

SOC:
• Victor P. Debattista, co-chair (UCLan, UK)
• Elena D’Onghia, co-chair (UWisconsin, Madison, USA) edonghia@astro.wisc.edu
• Luis Ho (Carnegie Observatories, USA) lho@pku.edu.cn
• Claude Carignan (UOuagadougou, Burkina Faso) claude.carignan@umontreal.ca
• Ken C. Freeman, (MSO, Australia) kcf@mso.anu.edu.au
• Martin Bureau (Oxford, UK) bureau@astro.ox.ac.uk
• Françoise Combes (OBSPM, France) francoise.combes@obspm.fr
• Keiichi Wada (Kagoshima University, Japan) wada@sci.kagoshima-u.ac.jp
• Claudia Mendes de Oliveira (USP, Brazil) Oliveira@astro.iag.usp.br
• Joss Bland-Hawthorne (Univ. of Sydney, Australia) jbh@physics.usyd.edu.au
• Chanda Jog (Bangalore, India) cjjog@physics.iisc.ernet.in
• George Lake (Univ. of Zurich, Switzerland) george@georgelake.org
• Lars Hernquist (Harvard, USA) lars@cfa.harvard.edu

LOC:
• Kris Zarb-Adami (LOC co-chair, University of Malta)
• Charles Sammut (LOC co-chair University of Malta)
• Pierre-Sandre Farrugia (University of Malta)
• Joseph Caruana (University of Malta)
• Sharon Pittman (UWisc, Madison, USA)

Purpose:
Recent surveys are revolutionizing our understanding of galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV, in particular with MANGA, is collecting kinematic data of thousands of galaxies in the nearby universe revealing new properties about the morphologies, dynamics and kinematics of galaxies. Future facilities, such as the SKA promise a significant advance in the quality of data available. At the same time, advances in computational cosmology have led to improved predictions for the properties of galaxies in the current paradigm of structure formation, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model. The simultaneous progress in the modeling and observing fronts has transformed the field of galaxy dynamics into a powerful probe of both cosmology and galaxy formation. Gas is an important driver of the evolution of galaxies, both at high redshift where it is by mass a major contributor and at low redshift where its strong coupling to the stellar component determines the evolution of morphology, star formation, radiation field and kinematics. Gas in galaxies is often warped, exhibits holes, and is transported by dynamical structures such as bars and spirals. At high redshift gas plays an important role in the shaping the morphologies of galaxies and, once escaped, in enriching the intergalactic medium. Making explicit connections between the high and low redshift Universe holds the promise of validating or challenging the cosmological paradigm of structure formation on galactic scales.

This IAU Symposium will bring together worldwide experts in galaxy dynamics, and
cosmology in order to promote collaborative efforts across theoretical, computational and observational disciplines. By fostering discussions and interactions between theorists and observers, we aim to help to set the scene for the exploitation of current and future instruments (e.g. ALMA, SKA, LSST).

Topics:
• The circulation of gas in galaxies (cold, hot accretion, feedback)
• Gas role in disk galaxies (spiral structures, warps, haloes)
• Gas as dynamical tracer at low redshift (gas as tracer of black holes)
• Scaling relations (gas vs stars, low vs high redshift)
• Gas in galaxy mergers (slow rotators, fast rotators)
• Gas in the Milky Way (cool, warm and hot phases of gas, the impact of GMCs)
• Quenching of galaxies (mechanisms, timescales and observable outcomes)
• Gas and Satellite Galaxies (the role of environment)

Venue and public activities:
The venue will probably be the Dolmen Hotel, in Qawra, Malta. The lodging and the conference would be at the hotel. Qawra is a town within easy access of the capital, Valletta, and the main airport. The hotel hosted “Hunting for the dark: the hidden side of galaxy formation” in 2009, an international conference attended by about 170 participants. The proceedings of this meeting were published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP Volume 1240). The University of Malta has an Institute of Space Science and Astrophysics (ISSA) since 2014. The chair of that conference was Victor Debattista. As in the earlier meeting, conference participants will be invited to engage in outreach activities, including public lectures, discussion forums for the general public and career advice for University undergraduates.