Postdoctoral Fellowship: AAPF: Constraining the Cosmic Evolution of Environmental Quenching & Predicting Protocluster Populations

Devontae Baxter被授予NSF天文学和天体物理奖学金，以在加州大学圣地亚哥分校开展一项研究和教育计划。巴克斯特将结合对星系群和星系团的尖端观测和最先进的模拟，以确定是什么驱动了卫星星系恒星形成的抑制(或猝灭)，以及这一过程在早期宇宙中是否不同。Baxter还将启动计算天体物理学研究准备(CARP)计划，为潜在的社区大学转学学生提供i)开始学术研究所需的计算技能，以及ii)相关的指导，以帮助他们在四年制大学及以后的转学过程中取得成功。这个项目将把大体积、高分辨率的宇宙N体模拟与对星系团和星系团的最全面的光谱和多通道成像观测的观测相结合，以(1)分离出主要的猝灭机制，负责打破位于z1的大质量星团的卫星中的气星循环；(2)对z1处环境猝灭的晕质量依赖施加强有力的约束；(3)约束过去80亿年来星系团和星系团种群猝灭时间尺度的红移演化；以及(4)对大质量星系团的祖先--即原始星系团--缺乏身体动力的静止种群进行预测。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Devontae Baxter is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the University of California, San Diego. Baxter will combine cutting-edge observations and state-of-the-art simulations of galaxy groups and clusters to determine what drives the suppression (or quenching) of star formation in satellite galaxies, and whether the process is different in the early cosmos. Baxter will also launch the Computational Astrophysics Research Preparation (CARP) program to provide prospective community college transfer students with i) the computational skills necessary to begin academic research and ii) relevant mentorship to aid in their transfer process and subsequent success at and beyond the four-year university. This project will combine large volume, high-resolution cosmological N-body simulations with observations from the most comprehensive spectroscopic and multi-passband imaging surveys of galaxy groups and clusters to (1) isolate the dominant quenching mechanism responsible for breaking the gas-star cycle in satellites of massive groups at z ~ 1; (2) place robust constraints on the halo-mass dependence of environmental quenching at z 1; (3) constrain the redshift evolution of the quenching timescale for group and cluster populations over the last 8 billion years; and (4) make physically motivated predictions for the poorly constrained quiescent population of the progenitors of massive clusters – i.e. protoclusters.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.