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Thursday, October 29
AT&T Conference Center, Classroom 105
[map]
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9:10-9:20
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Welcome & Texas Cosmology Center
Eiichiro Komatsu ~ UT Austin
pdf
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9:20-9:30
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Welcome
Mary Ann Rankin ~ Dean of the College of Natural Sciences
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DARK ENERGY
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9:30-9:50
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Supernovae and the Accelerating
Universe
Nick Suntzeff ~ Texas A&M
pdf ~
abstract
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9:50-10:10
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Cosmology with the SDSS II Supernova Survey
Craig Wheeler ~ UT Austin
pdf ~
abstract |
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10:10-10:30
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Type Ia Supernovae
Kevin Krisciunas ~ Texas A&M
pdf
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10:30-11:00
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Break
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11:00-11:20
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Hobby-Eberly Dark
Energy Experiment
Karl Gebhardt or Gary Hill ~ UT Austin
pdf
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11:20-11:40
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The Dark Energy Survey
Darren DePoy ~ Texas A&M
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11:40-12:00
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Constraining dark energy with an improved measurement
of the Hubble constant
Lucas Macri ~ Texas A&M
pdf [13MB] ~
abstract
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12:00-1:30
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Lunch
Tejas Dining Room
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1:30-2:00
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SPECIAL TALK
Carbon Monoxide Line Emission as a CMB
Foreground: Tomography of the Star Forming Universe
Rashid Sunyaev ~ MPI
pdf
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2:00-3:00
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Poster Session
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3:00-3:20
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The growth rate index of large scale structure
as a probe of cosmic acceleration
Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki ~ UT Dallas
pdf ~
abstract |
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3:20-3:40
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A transparent instance of how Lambda contributes to the bending of light
Wolfgang Rindler ~ UT Dallas
pdf ~
abstract |
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STRUCTURE FORMATION
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3:40-4:00
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Why does environment matter?
Kim-Vy Tran ~ Texas A&M
pdf ~
abstract
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4:00-4:30
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Break
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4:30-4:50
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Searching for the First Galaxies
Steve Finkelstein ~ Texas A&M
pdf ~
abstract
Observations of very distant galaxies probes both the formation and
evolution of galaxies, and also the nature of the sources responsible
for reionizing the Intergalactic Medium (IGM). Here, we study the
physical characteristics of galaxies at 6.3 < z < 8.7, selected from
deep near-IR imaging with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the
Hubble Space Telescope. We investigate the rest-frame UV colors,
stellar masses, ages, and dust extinction of this galaxy sample. The
rest-frame UV colors are bluer than local star-forming galaxies. We
find that the fainter galaxies at these redshifts have bluer colors,
necessitating young ages (<100 Myr), low or zero dust attenuation, and
low metallicities. These observations support the conclusion that these
galaxies likely leak a high fraction of Lyman continuum photons into the
IGM. Nearly all galaxies are undetected in deep {Spitzer IRAC imaging
at 3.6 and 4.5 microns. At these redshifts the age of the Universe
limits the amount of stellar mass in late-type populations, and the WFC3
photometry implies galaxy stellar masses ~ 10^8 - 10^9 solar masses for
Salpeter-like initial mass functions. The masses of "typical\'' z > 7
galaxies are lower than "characteristic\'' Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at
lower redshifts, and are comparable to less evolved galaxies selected on
the basis of their Lyman-alpha emission at 3 < z < 6. We interpret
the 6.3 < z < 8.7 galaxies as the building blocks of "mature" galaxies
at lower redshifts. We estimate that Lyman-alpha emission could
contribute to the observed WFC3 colors. The plausible Lyman-alpha line
flux in these objects ranges over (1-7) x 10^-18 erg s^-1 cm^-2, with a
typical line flux of ~ 10^-18 erg s^-1 cm^-2, roughly a factor of
order four below currently planned surveys. Lastly, we derive an
integrated UV specific luminosity for the detected galaxies at z=7 and
z=8 that is within factors of a few compared to that required to
reionize the IGM, even with no correction for luminosity incompleteness
or dust extinction. Therefore, we conclude that reionization at these
redshifts results from predominantly low-luminosity galaxies which have
a high escape fraction of Lyman--continuum photons.
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4:50-5:10
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Cosmic Reionization
Paul Shapiro ~ UT Austin
pdf [7MB] ~
abstract |
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5:10-5:30
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Simulating cosmological reionization
with Enzo
Daniel Reynolds ~ SMU
pdf ~
abstract
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5:30-7:00
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Reception
M3 Pre-function
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7:00-9:00
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Dinner
Salon DE
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Friday, October 30
AT&T Conference Center, Amphitheatre 204
[map]
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DARK ENERGY, INFLATION, AND STRINGS
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9:30-9:50
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F-ast Proton Decay
Dimitri Nanopoulos ~ Texas A&M
pdf
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9:50-10:10
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The Horava-Lifshitz and its Applications to Cosmology and Astrophysics
Anzhong Wang ~ Baylor
pdf ~
abstract
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10:10-10:30
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Investigations of the String Landscape
Gerald Cleaver ~ Baylor
abstract |
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10:30-11:00
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Break
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11:00-11:20
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Asymptotically Safe Inflation
Steven Weinberg ~ UT Austin
pdf
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11:20-11:40
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String Theory and Inflation
Melanie Becker ~ Texas A&M
pdf ~
abstract
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DARK MATTER
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11:40-12:00
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Dark Matter at the LHC
Bhaskar Dutta ~ Texas A&M
pdf
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12:00-1:30
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Lunch
Tejas Dining Room
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1:30-2:00
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SPECIAL TALK
Bose-Einstein
Condensation of Dark Matter Axions
Pierre Sikivie ~ Univ. of Florida
pdf ~
abstract
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2:00-2:20
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The Texas Dark Matter Project:
Constraints on Dark Matter Axion Models from White Dwarf Evolution
Don Winget ~ UT Austin
pdf
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2:20
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Adjourn
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