Oral Presentation

Probing the Co-Evolution of Galaxies and the Circumgalactic Medium with Large Surveys

Author(s): Ting-Wen Lan (Kavli IPMU)

Presenter: Ting-Wen Lan (Kavli IPMU)

Gas around galaxies, the circumgalactic medium (CGM), plays an essential role in our understanding of galaxy evolution. Being the interface between galaxies and the intergalactic medium, it is the region where gas accretion and outflows --key drivers of galaxy evolution-- leave their signatures. In this talk, I will show that one can probe the physical properties of the CGM and extract the signatures of gas flows via absorption line spectroscopy. I will show that by applying novel statistical techniques to massive spectroscopic and photometric datasets from sky surveys, we can obtain unprecedented measurements, reveal new pictures of the CGM, and address two fundamental questions about the CGM-- (1) what are the physical properties of the CGM and (2) how the properties of galaxies and their surrounding gas co-evolve with cosmic time. Finally, I will discuss how the properties of the CGM can place strong constraints on the models of galaxy evolution.