KICP Colloquia: 2006

September 27, 2006 | 15:30, RI 480 | Host: Angela V. Olinto
Type 1a Supernovae from the CFHT Legacy Survey
Eric Aubourg, APC Paris / Princeton University
Note: Refreshments served at 3:15 pm
The Supernovae Legacy Survey aims at discovering and spectroscopically identifying 700 type-Ia SN during its five years of operations at CFHT in Hawaii. I will present the survey and the current constraints on matter and energy content of the Universe and on the dark energy equation of state parameter. I will focus on how we plan to increase the expected number of SN to about 1000 using an offline analysis and discuss perspectives of the survey.

October 11, 2006 | 15:30, RI 480 | Host: Angela V. Olinto
Massive Black Holes from Early Times to the Present
Marta Volonteri, Northwestern University
I'll discuss models for the hierarchical growth of supermassive black holes, feeding pregalactic black hole seeds. Mergers and dynamical interactions, as well as their implications, will be critically addressed. I'll also discuss the constraints on the early evolution of the black holes required by the observations of z=6 quasars.

October 25, 2006 | 15:30, RI 480 | Host: Angela V. Olinto
The Origin of Spheroidal Galaxies
Sandy Faber, University of California, Santa Cruz
For decades, the standard paradigm for spheroidal galaxy formation was the monolithic collapse theory, in which spheroids collapsed gravitationally in bulk and formed all their stars at very high redshift. This talk will examine evidence that has accumulated over the past year that suggests an extended formation period for spheroidal systems, with many of them forming rather recently via the quenching of blue, star-forming galaxies AFTER z = 1. The mechanism for this quenching is not well understood, but it might be feedback from active black holes. If true, the symbiosis is complete in that the galaxy gives birth to the black hole, but the black hole eventually determines the star-formation history of the galaxy.