No abstract available

No abstract available

[en] This program is concerned with developing and verifying the validity of observational methods for constraining the properties of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Excellent progress has been made in comparing observational projects involving weak gravitational lensing using both ground and space-based instruments, in further constraining the nature of dark matter via precise measures of its distribution in clusters of galaxies using strong gravitational lensing, in demonstrating the possible limitations of using distant supernovae in future dark energy missions, and in investigating the requirement for ground-based surveys of baryonic acoustic oscillations.

[en] The current status of the parton level, next-to-leading order Monte Carlo program MCFM is described

[en] The Maryland Centrifugal Experiment (MCX) Project has investigated the concepts of centrifugal plasma confinement and stabilization of instabilities by velocity shear. The basic requirement is supersonic plasma rotation about a shaped, open magnetic field. Overall, the MCX Project attained three primary goals that were set out at the start of the project. First, supersonic rotation at Mach number up to 2.5 was obtained. Second, turbulence from flute interchange modes was found considerably reduced from conventional. Third, plasma pressure was contained along the field, as evidenced by density drops of x10 from the center to the mirror throats.

[en] We present Keck LRIS spectroscopy for a sample of 103 massive (M > 10^10.6 M _☉) galaxies with redshifts 0.9 < z < 1.6. Of these, 56 are quiescent with high signal-to-noise absorption line spectra, enabling us to determine robust stellar velocity dispersions for the largest sample yet available beyond a redshift of 1. Together with effective radii measured from deep Hubble Space Telescope images, we calculate dynamical masses and address key questions relating to the puzzling size growth claimed by many observers for quiescent galaxies over the redshift interval 0 < z < 2. Our large sample provides the first opportunity to carefully examine the relationship between stellar and dynamical masses at high redshift. We find this relation closely follows that determined locally. We also confirm the utility of the locally established empirical calibration which enables high-redshift velocity dispersions to be estimated photometrically, and we determine its accuracy to be 35%. To address recent suggestions that progenitor bias—the continued arrival of recently quenched larger galaxies—can largely explain the size evolution of quiescent galaxies, we examine the growth at fixed velocity dispersion assuming this quantity is largely unaffected by the merger history. Using the velocity dispersion-age relation observed in the local universe, we demonstrate that significant size and mass growth have clearly occurred in individual systems. Parameterizing the relation between mass and size growth over 0 < z < 1.6 as R∝M ^α, we find α = 1.6 ± 0.3, in agreement with theoretical expectations from simulations of minor mergers. Relaxing the assumption that the velocity dispersion is unchanging, we examine growth assuming a constant ranking in galaxy velocity dispersion. This approach is applicable only to the large-dispersion tail of the distribution, but yields a consistent growth rate of α = 1.4 ± 0.2. Both methods confirm that progenitor bias alone is insufficient to explain our new observations and that quiescent galaxies have grown in both size and stellar mass over 0 < z < 1.6.

[en] The contemporary discoveries of galaxies and gamma ray bursts (GRBs) at high redshift have supplied the first direct information on star formation when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. The probable origin of long duration GRBs in the deaths of massive stars would link the universal GRB rate to the redshift-dependent star formation rate (SFR) density, although exactly how is currently unknown. As the most distant GRBs and star-forming galaxies probe the reionization epoch, the potential reward of understanding the redshift-dependent ratio Ψ(z) of the GRB rate to SFR is significant and includes addressing fundamental questions such as incompleteness in rest-frame UV surveys for determining the SFR at high redshift and time variations in the stellar initial mass function. Using an extensive sample of 112 GRBs above a fixed luminosity limit drawn from the Second Swift Burst Alert Telescope catalog and accounting for uncertainty in their redshift distribution by considering the contribution of 'dark' GRBs, we compare the cumulative redshift distribution N(< z) of GRBs with the star formation density ρ-dot_*(z) measured from UV-selected galaxies over 0 < z <4. Strong evolution (e.g., Ψ(z)∝(1 + z)^1.5) is disfavored (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test P < 0.07). We show that more modest evolution (e.g., Ψ(z)∝(1 + z)^0.5) is consistent with the data (P ≈ 0.9) and can be readily explained if GRBs occur primarily in low-metallicity galaxies which are proportionally more numerous at earlier times. If such trends continue beyond z ≅ 4, we find that the discovery rate of distant GRBs implies an SFR density much higher than that inferred from UV-selected galaxies. While some previous studies of the GRB-SFR connection have concluded that GRB-inferred star formation at high redshift would be sufficient to maintain cosmic reionization over 6< z <9 and reproduce the observed optical depth of Thomson scattering to the cosmic microwave background, we show that such a star formation history would overpredict the observed stellar mass density at z > 4 measured from rest-frame optical surveys. The resolution of this important disagreement is currently unclear, and the GRB production rate at early times is likely more complex than a simple function of SFR and progenitor metallicity.

[en] We present and discuss the mean rest-frame ultraviolet spectrum for a sample of 81 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) selected to be B-band dropouts at z ≅ 4. The sample is mostly drawn from our ongoing Keck/DEIMOS survey in the GOODS fields and augmented with archival Very Large Telescope data. In general, we find similar spectroscopic trends to those found in earlier surveys of LBGs at z = 3. Specifically, low-ionization absorption lines which trace neutral outflowing gas are weaker in galaxies with stronger Lyα emission, bluer UV spectral slopes, lower stellar masses, lower UV luminosities, and smaller half-light radii. This is consistent with a physical picture whereby star formation drives outflows of neutral gas which scatter Lyα and produce strong low-ionization absorption lines, while increasing galaxy stellar mass, size, metallicity, and dust content. Typical galaxies are thus expected to have stronger Lyα emission and weaker low-ionization absorption at earlier times, and we indeed find somewhat weaker low-ionization absorption at higher redshifts. In conjunction with earlier results from our survey, we argue that the reduced low-ionization absorption is likely caused by lower covering fraction and/or velocity range of outflowing neutral gas at earlier epochs. Although low-ionization absorption decreases at higher redshift, fine-structure emission lines are stronger, suggesting a greater concentration of neutral gas at small galactocentric radius (∼< 5 kpc). Our continuing survey will enable us to extend these diagnostics more reliably to higher redshift and determine the implications for the escape fraction of ionizing photons which governs the role of early galaxies in cosmic reionization.

[en] We present the first high-redshift Hubble diagram for Type II-P supernovae (SNe II-P) based upon five events at redshift upto z ∼0.3. This diagram was constructed using photometry from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Supernova Legacy Survey and absorption line spectroscopy from the Keck observatory. The method used to measure distances to these supernovae is based on recent work by Hamuy and Pinto (2002) and exploits a correlation between the absolute brightness of SNeII-P and the expansion velocities derived from the minimum of the Fe II 516.9 nm P-Cygni feature observed during the plateau phases. We present three refinements to this method which significantly improve the practicality of measuring the distances of SNe II-P at cosmologically interesting redshifts. These are an extinction correction measurement based on the V-I colors at day 50, across-correlation measurement for the expansion velocity and the ability to extrapolate such velocities accurately over almost the entire plateau phase. We apply this revised method to our dataset of high-redshift SNe II-P and find that the resulting Hubble diagram has a scatter of only 0.26 magnitudes, thus demonstrating the feasibility of measuring the expansion history, with present facilities, using a method independent of that based upon supernovae of Type Ia

[en] In order to determine what processes govern the assembly history of galaxies with rotating disks, we examine the stellar mass Tully-Fisher (TF) relation over a wide range in redshift partitioned according to whether or not galaxies contain a prominent bulge. Using our earlier Keck spectroscopic sample, for which bulge/total parameters are available from analyses of Hubble Space Telescope images, we find that bulgeless disk galaxies with z > 0.8 present a significant offset from the local (TF) relation whereas, at all redshifts probed, those with significant bulges fall along the local relation. Our results support the suggestion that bulge growth may somehow expedite the maturing of disk galaxies onto the (TF) relation. We discuss a variety of physical hypotheses that may explain this result in the context of kinematic observations of star-forming galaxies at redshifts z = 0 and z > 2.