RSAA Colloquium: A/Professor Alex Ji (U.Chicago)

Photo from: https://astrophysics.uchicago.edu

The Milky Way's satellite dwarf galaxies are powerful probes of many important astrophysical processes. Their kinematics provide insights into galactic dynamics and the nature of dark matter, while their chemical compositions preserve a history of early galaxy formation and nucleosynthesis. Recently, all-sky astrometry from the Gaia satellite has enabled the discovery and characterisation of dwarf galaxies at different stages of tidal disruption. These new galaxies lie at the extremes of dwarf galaxy parameter space, whether in their structural properties or their star formation histories. In this talk, I will show how spectroscopic observations of the kinematics and chemistry of these newly discovered dwarf galaxies can provide crucial insights into galactic dynamics and nucleosynthesis. I will show how kinematics of tidally disrupting diffuse dwarf galaxies probe the interaction between the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud, and highlight how the increased diversity of dwarf galaxy star formation histories clearly shows the importance of neutron star mergers in dwarf galaxy chemical evolution.