Current Research
Instrumentation:
I am working with Dr. Ian S. McLean, head of the UCLA Infrared Lab, on the instrument MOSFIRE. I specifically work on the detector and the detector system. MOSFIRE will use a HAWAII2-RG detector from Teledyne Imaging Sensors. It is a HgCdTel with a 2.5 micron cut-off. We are using an ASIC controller, which is new technology created for the James-Webb Space Telescope. I have focused on testing the noise, linearity, and dark current for the detector, as well as finding the optimal settings to obtain the best possible performance. MOSFIRE is expected to be delivered in the winter of 2011 to the Keck Telescope in Hawaii.
Link to poster presented on the Evaluation of the ASIC-Controlled H2-RG Science Grade Detector for MOSFIRE (presented at the 215th AAS in Washington, DC, Jan. 2010).
Extragalactic:
As well I am working with Dr. Alice Shapley on high redshift (z=2-3) galaxies. Currently I am working on a sample of star-forming galaxies with double-peaked Lyman α emission. These profiles provide additional constraints on the escape of Lyman α photons due to the rich velocity structure in the emergent line. Our database is drawn form the UV-selected star-forming galaxies from Charles Steidel and collaboraters obtained from the LRIS spectragraph. We have determined that roughly 30% of objects with detecable Lyman α emission in this sample display multiple-peaked behavior. Lyman α is a resonant line, making it difficult to measure an accurate systemic redshift. We have obtained Hα or [OIII] for 18 double-peaked objects using NIRSPEC on Keck to measure accurate systemic redshifts, nebular line widths, and intrinsic ionizing photon fluxes. The goal of this project is to create accurate models for these systems, thus allowing us to understand in better detail different aspects of outflow (infall), such as the mass outflow (infall) rate for star-forming galaxies at these redshifts.
Link to poster presented on The Kinematics of Multiple-Peaked Lyman &alpha Emission in Star-Forming Galaxies at z~2-3 (presented at the 216th AAS in Miami, Fl, May 2010).
Link to paper, currently posted on astro-ph and submitted to ApJ.
Future Work:
The future work for my thesis will be using MOSFIRE to obtain data on high redshift galaxies to learn more about their kinematics, specifically examining protoclusters to understand more about the physics of galaxy formation within an extreme environment. I will target important diagnostic lines (i.e. Hα, [OIII]λ5007, Hβ, and [NII]) to measure properties such as velocity dispersion and gas-phase metallicity for objects within the protocluster, as well as 'field' galaxies, to comare the importantce of environment. Due to MOSFIREs multi-object nature we will be able to obtain large samples of these high redshift galaxies more efficiently than ever before.
