Members of the the extragalactic group work on a broad array of astrophysical questions: What is the expansion history of the Universe and the evolution of dark energy? How do cosmic structures form and evolve? Which objects reionized the Universe and how did they do it? When did the first galaxies form and what what were their properties? How does the baryonic content of galaxies grow and what is the relative importance of different processes, such as major mergers, minor mergers, smooth cold mode accretion, and secular processes? Through what feedback processes are baryons cycled out of galaxies? How do black holes form, grow and impact their host galaxies and surroundings? Where are we with regards to long-standing challenges for Lambda cold dark matter models of galaxy evolution, such as the angular momentum problem, the challenge of bulgeless galaxies, the sub-structure problem, and the cusp-core controversy? How do galaxies evolve both in time and in different environments, such as field, groups, and clusters? Research areas include:
- Reionization Era & First Galaxies
- Black Holes and AGN
- Star Formation
- Secular Evolution
- Galaxy Mergers
- Galaxy Clusters
- Dark Matter
- Stellar Populations
- Instrumentation
Group members tackle these problems both through state-of-the-art simulations using for instance, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and panchromatic ground and space observations from X-ray to radio wavelengths. We are involved in several large imaging and spectroscopic survey of galaxies, including:
- HETDEX (Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment)
- GEMS (Galaxy Evolution from Morphology and SEDs)
- GOODS (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey)
- GOODS-NICMOS Survey (GNS) of Massive Galaxies
- STAGES (Space Telescope A901/902 Galaxy Evolution Survey)
- Coma Cluster ACS Treasury Survey
- VENGA (The VIRUS-P Exploration of Nearby Galaxies)
- VIXENS (The VIRUS-P Investigation of the eXtreme ENvironments of Starbursts)
