Research Interests

Our research aims are to study the formation, evolution, and structure of galaxies. A central theme of the group’s research for many years has been stellar clusters and the structure of the Milky Way.

    Galaxies are fundamental units of matter in the Universe, and understanding their formation and evolution is a problem of central importance. There are a number of complementary routes to gaining such understanding. One method seeks to unravel the history of our own and nearby galaxies through the detailed study of their component stars and star clusters. Both theoretical modeling and observational work on the Milky Way are carried out in the group. For example, present research topics include the kinematical and dynamical properties of stellar clusters, abundance gradients and their evolution along the Milky Way disk, the G-dwarf problem, and Galactic chemical evolution.

   Another powerful probe of galaxy evolution is provided by observing distant galaxies at high redshift. This allows us to see galaxies as they were long ago, and at various stages of their formation and evolution. Two important tracers of young galaxies are Lyman break galaxies and damped Lyman alpha systems. They are particularly useful probes of the formation and evolution of galaxies at earlier epochs, when the development of structure in the Universe was less advanced than it is today.

    Large scale galaxy surveys such as SDSS and 2MASS have recently started to release their rich datasets. Group members have been involved in using these to investigate various statistical properties of observed galaxy populations, such as the luminosities and sizes of different galaxy types, and the star formation history of early and late type galaxies.

    Understanding how galaxy disks form is the key to understand how a galaxy forms. It is believed that disk dominated galaxies such as spirals are formed by the cooling of baryonic matter inside a virialized dark halo. Semi-analytic models (SAM) are a powerful tool in studying this process. The SAM method gives a detailed description of how the angular momentum in a protogalaxy is redistributed, how the disk grows, how star formation progresses, and can elucidate the role of galactic winds, and feedback, amongst many other effects. Researchers in the group have been actively involved in tackling these important research problems.

    In addition to these research topics, our long term photometric monitoring of AGN variability is also on-going, using our 156cm telescope, as well as some other large telescopes; and fruitful international co-operation continues with Germany (MPA), Canada (DAO), France (IAP), and the USA (UMASS) through visiting scholars, student exchanges, and joint observation programs.

    One can learn more about our research from our publications.