Title: The circumgalactic medium of disk galaxies

Speaker: Daniel Wang (UMASS)  

Time & Place: Thursday, 3:00pm, May 29th, Lecture Hall, 3rd floor

Abstract: As the interface between the interstellar and intergalactic media, the circumgalactic medium is a depository of galactic feedback and a reservoir of materials for star formation in galactic disks. The circumgalactic medium is also expected to contain the bulk of the baryon mass associated with the dark matter halos of individual galaxies. I will review recent efforts to characterize the medium, focusing on the comparison between observations and theoretical predictions and on related physical processes. I will further discuss how ongoing/future observations from radio to X-ray will greatly advance our understanding of the medium.

Biog:  Prof. Wang obtained his Ph.D. in 1990 from Columbia University, subsequently receiving the ASP Robert J. Trumpler Award for Outstanding North American Ph.D Dissertation Research in Astronomy. He then took up a Hubble fellowship (University of Colorado) and Lindheimer fellowship (Northwestern University), before becoming professor in the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was also a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, was the Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at the University of Cambridge, and holds a visiting Chair Professorship at Nanjing University. He has published 150+ research papers in journals including Nature, Science and PNAS. These cover a broad range of topics from compact stars to interstellar and intergalactic media, using a variety of observational techniques.