Submitted for publication
KINETYS II: FURTHER CONSTRAINTS ON THE STELLAR INITIAL MASS FUNCTION FROM K-BAND SPECTROSCOPY
The K-band is the last stop before you leave the near infrared. Observations here are tricky but it's a great place to look if you want to learn new things about the low temperature dwarf stars and giants contained in other galaxies.
THINGS I'M WORKING ON
THE STELLAR INITIAL MASS FUNCTION
What has the IMF ever done for us?
The IMF is the end product of the complex, messy physics of star formation. It describes how quickly stars of particular masses are being created.
The IMF affects everything about how galaxies evolve: how many supernova explosions occur, how fast gas gets enriched with the heavy elements needed to make planets, and how much gas gets locked up in long-lived dwarf stars.
STELLAR POPULATION SYNTHESIS
Extragalactic archaeology
Although we can't see individual stars even in nearby galaxies, information about them remains encoded in each galaxy's light. I use stellar population synthesis models to decrypt this information and learn about the IMF, chemical composition, and star formation history in nearby massive galaxies.
INFERENCE OF STELLAR POPULATION PROPERTIES
Robust statistics required
I make use of Bayesian methods, e.g. Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo parameter inference, in order to find the best model for the stellar population of a target galaxy.
