WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: The Dependence of Gas Richness and Disk Building on Galaxy Mass

SPEAKER: Professor Sheila Kannappan ,

TIME: Wednesday March 23, 2011 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: Room 101 Olin Physical Laboratory

Galaxies are known to transition from largely blue and disk-dominated to largely red and spheroid-dominated as they increase in mass across the "bimodality" scale at a stellar mass of M_* ∼ 3x10¹⁰ M_sun. I will present converging lines of evidence suggesting that the beginning of this transition occurs at another mass scale of interest: a "threshold" mass at M_* ∼ 5x10⁹ M_sun, where shifts in both gas richness and galaxy structure mark the dwarf/giant galaxy divide. Combining different lines of evidence, I will examine the phenomena and physical processes underlying this transition.