APEC Seminar (Astronomy - Particle Physics - Experimental Physics - Cosmology)

Speaker: Tucker Jones (UC Davis)
Title: The chemical evolution of galaxies across cosmic time
Date (JST): Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 11:00 - 12:00
Place: Zoom
Related File: 2791.pdf
Abstract: What is the heavy element content ("metallicity") of the Universe?
Chemical evolution of galaxies is a powerful probe of their assembly, and of the cycle of baryons between galaxies and the circumgalactic + intergalactic medium. However, current measurements based on oxygen abundance are uncertain by a factor of 2, and many common diagnostics suffer from systematic offsets at high redshift. I will discuss measurements of the evolution of gas-phase metallicity across 13 billion years, alongside ongoing efforts to establish the absolute metallicity scale at both low and high redshifts. This in turn allows us to understand how the processes of accretion, star formation, and feedback govern the growth of galaxies across cosmic history. I will also highlight exciting near-future prospects for chemical evolution with JWST Cycle 1 observing programs.