The CGCA (The Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics) seminars are scheduled for Fridays at 1:00 pm in in the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex (KIRC) Room KEN 2175. A “brown bag lunch” group will assemble in KEN 4118 (fourth floor kitchenette located next to the elevators) at 12:00 NOON.

Simulating the formation and evolution of galaxies across cosmic time
Daniel Angles Alcazar, Northwestern University

In the currently accepted scenario for the formation of cosmic structure, primordial density fluctuations in the very early universe collapse by gravitational instability and grow hierarchically to form the galaxy populations that we see today. From a theoretical point of view, understanding the connection between the initial conditions and the formation of galaxies at different epochs requires incorporating a wide variety of physical processes into one self-consistent model. In this talk, I will describe recent efforts in this direction by means of large cosmological hydrodynamic simulations including two of the main ingredients in modern simulations: galactic winds driven by stellar feedback processes and supermassive black holes growing at the centers of galaxies.