Monday, September 15, 2014 at 4:00 PM

JILA Auditorium

Sabrina Stierwelt, University of Virginia

"The Role of Dwarf-Dwarf Interactions in the Evolution of Low Mass Galaxies"

Abstract:

I will present the initial results from TiNy Titans, the first systematic study a sample of isolated interacting dwarf galaxies and the mechanisms governing their star formation. Mergers of massive galaxies provide a significant mode of galaxy evolution and are observed to inspire intense starbursts and significant rearranging of the galaxies' gas and dust. However, despite the fact that mergers among low mass galaxies outnumber those between massive ones, whether these effects occur in the shallower gravitational potential wells of dwarf galaxies remains completely unconstrained. A few intriguing examples of dwarf-dwarf interactions exist in the literature, but the efficiency of gas removal and the enhancement of star formation in dwarfs via pre-processing (i.e. dwarf-dwarf interactions occurring before the accretion by a massive host) has never been studied for a large sample of dwarfs. Our multiwavelength approach gathers high resolution optical, UV, and radio imaging to probe the effects of interactions on the star formation and ISM in a large sample of dwarf pairs selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find interacting dwarfs have enhanced star formation to an even greater extent than is observed in massive galaxies, but, surprisingly, they are not tapping their gas reservoirs (the fuel for their higher star formation rates).

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