Monday, April 20, 2026 at 3:30 pm

JILA Foothills Room

Allison Matthews , Carnegie Observatories

"Tracing the Rate and Regulation of Star Formation with Radio Emission Across Cosmic Time"

Abstract:

In the last decade, with the commissioning of high sensitivity radio telescopes, we have opened a new window into the faint radio sky. These novel facilities probe fundamental physical processes that regulate star formation and characterize star formation in normal, Milky Way-like galaxies over the history of the universe. While commissioning the MeerKAT radio telescope, I utilized its unprecedented sensitivity to measure the star formation history of the universe, revealing that prior observations likely missed half the star formation at all cosmic times. This discrepancy has critical implications across astrophysics: estimates of gravitational wave events, the frequency of astrophysical transients, and even when elements prevalent in planet formation were synthesized. I have used these same high-sensitivity radio facilities to place critical constraints on the drivers of galactic winds, which we believe regulate star formation across all of cosmic time. In this talk, I will present these findings and outline programs I am leading and developing with JWST and next generation radio facilities such as the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA) to improve our observational constraints on the rate and regulation of star formation both locally and at the earliest epochs of the universe.

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