ASTROPHYSICAL AND PLANETARY SCIENCES
SPRING 2000

COURSE NUMBER: ASTR 6000

TITLE: ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR - THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM

TIME AND PLACE: JILA 10th Floor-Room C, 4:00 - 5:15 PM (Thursday) - note change

PROFESSOR: Michael Shull, mshull@casa.colorado.edu

OFFICE HOURS: 9-11 A.M. Weekdays, Duane C-328, 2-7827

CONTENTS:

The Astrophysics Seminar (ASTR 6000) is a topical seminar, offered each semester on a different issue, often related to one of the astrophysics ``discipline courses'' that term. This semester, in connection with the graduate courses ASTR 5770 (Cosmology) and ASTR 5740 (Interstellar Medium), the seminar will be on The Intergalactic Medium (IGM), including both theoretical and observational studies. The theoretical studies will include N-body hydrodynamical models of the IGM, and physical processes in the IGM. Observational studies will include UV/Optical spectroscopic studies of the Lyman-alpha forest, galactic halos, and QSO absorption systems. We will discuss observations of the IGM from several facilities, including:

  • The Hubble Space Telescope

  • The Keck 10-meter Telescope

  • Future Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on HST-2003 mission

After preliminary lectures and readings, members of the class will read and discuss scientific papers.

This seminar will meet 15 times during the term, each Thursday at 4:00 pm. The first meeting is Tuesday January 18, but subsequent meetings are Thursdays concluding on May 4. There will be two background lectures by Shull or other APS colleagues and 12 student-led seminars. Shull will assign teams of 2 students to lead the discussions of the ``paper of the week''. Each student will be responsible for reviews in 4 sessions. However, all students are responsible for reading the weekly paper. Please treat this reading seriously and come prepared to describe the major results of the papers.

PREREQUISITES: Graduate status in APS or PHYS (or permission of instructor)

SEMINAR TOPICS AND READING:

    Jan. 18 - Background Lecture 1 on the IGM (Shull)

    Jan. 27 - Background Lecture 2 on the IGM (Shull)

    Feb. 03 - Measuring the Baryon Density by D/H (Cunningham)

    Feb. 10 - Inferring Sizes of Ly-alpha clouds (Laurent, Zuev)

    Feb. 17 - Evolution of Lya Clouds in Redshift/Column Density (Browning, Knowles)

    Feb. 24 - Metals in High-z Ly-alpha Clouds (Tumlinson, Indebetouw)

    Mar. 02 - Reionization and HI/HeII Gunn-Peterson Effect (Indebetouw, Cunningham)

    Mar. 09 - N-Body Hydrodynamical Models of the IGM (Laurent, Browning)

    Mar. 16 - The Low-Redshift Lyman-alpha Absorbers (Knowles)

    Mar. 23 - Hot Shocked Baryons in the IGM (Tumlinson, Browning)

    Mar. 30 - Spring Break (no meeting)

    Apr. 06 - Two-Point Correlation in Velocity (Zuev, Indebetouw)

    Apr. 13 - Evolution of low-redshift Lya Forest in CDM (Tumlinson)

    Apr. 20 - Damped Lya absorbers: neutral gas and metals (Laurent, Cunningham)

    Apr. 27 - Instruments: HST and Keck spectrographs (Zuev, Knowles)

    May 04 - Evolution of Metals in Damped Lya Absorbers (Shull)

Last modified Sept. 2, 1999 by JMS