Tracking the Causes and Effects of Galactic Winds with Resolved Spectroscopy

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Extreme winds driven by bursts of star formation or active galactic nuclei can eject gas from a galaxy, but weaker galactic winds are more prevalent and their long-term impacts on galaxy evolution may be significant. Principal Investigator (PI) Medling and her team will analyze the Sydney Australian Astronomical Observatory Multi-object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey data to identify outflows and quantify the effects of winds on their host galaxies. The PI will form a multi-level mentoring community to build connections between students, faculty, and staff at the University of Toledo to help students excel in their degree program. The team will develop a public show for the Ritter Planetarium, “The Secret Lives of Galaxies”, which will be freely available for download in both English and Spanish.The team will use a 3D shock diagnostic that can trace outflows 1-2 orders of magnitude weaker than standard methods. The team will combine SAMI gas and stellar kinematics with follow-up near-infrared observations using the Rapid Infrared Imager Spectrometer on the Lowell Discovery Telescope and molecular gas observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The combined datasets will provide three independent tracers of shocked gas at similar spatial resolutions: optical emission lines at 10,000K, near-infrared molecular hydrogen lines at 500K, and carbon monoxide emission at 10-30K. This large sample of spatially resolved measurements of the phase structure of outflowing gas is crucial for constraining feedback prescriptions in galaxy evolution simulations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.