Structure and dynamics of galaxies and their dark matter halos

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My research activities will focus on two interrelated areas: galactic astronomy and the nature of dark matter. Beautiful, majestic, and remarkably diverse, galaxies occupy a special place in astronomical lore. While many galaxies appear to be isolated and quiescent, they are continually evolving, forming bars and spiral arms, swallowing up satellite galaxies, and merging with one another. My collaborators, thesis students, and I are building idealized models of disk galaxies to study these complicated processes. We fit observational data for actual galaxies by tuning the parameters of the model and study their evolution using numerical simulations. We have built a suite of models for our galaxy, the Milky Way, and found that they develop bars and spiral structure similar to what is seen in nature. In the future, we will incorporate gaseous disks and globular clusters into the model. We will also study galaxy-galaxy interactions.