Evolution of the Small Galaxy Population From High Redshift to the Present

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This award facilitates scientific research using the large new computational resource named Blue Waters scheduled to be deployed at the University of Illinois in 2012. It provides travel funds to support technical coordination between the principal investigators, the Blue Waters project team and vendor technical team.The Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm for structure formation has had many successes over a large range of scales: from Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations on the scale of the horizon to the formation and clustering of individual galaxies. However, at the low end of the galaxy luminosity function, the agreement between the CDM theory and observations is somewhat at odds. In particular, the existence of bulgeless, cored small galaxies is not a natural prediction of CDM. However, these are the scales where the baryonic physics of gas cooling, star formation and feedback can significantly impact the overall mass of the galaxy. Furthermore, accurately modeling the star formation process requires spatial resolution of order 100 parsecs or less and mass resolutions of less than 10000 solar masses in order to resolve the molecular star forming regions of the interstellar medium. The planned simulations will use the Blue Waters petascale system to model space telescope survey volumes consistent with addresssing small galaxies from high redshift to the present with sufficient resolution to make robust predictions of the luminosity function, star formation rate and morphologies appropriate for these surveys.Students will be involved in these computational advances in cosmology research. The project team is successful in attracting a diverse population of students. Morever, the simulations will be represented visually in public outreach forums as well as in instruction in undergraduate courses, increasing public understanding of galaxy and star formation which is fundamental to our knowledge of the Universe as a whole.