Friday, December 05, 2025 at 12:15 pm

JILA Foothills Room

Sóley Hyman , University of Arizona

"Patterns in chaos: a new framework for interpreting dynamics"

Abstract:

The internal dynamics of galaxies controls how they evolve to form structures like bars and spiral arms. However, despite a century of observations, there is still no consensus on the dynamical mechanisms that drive bar and spiral galaxy evolution. High-resolution galaxy simulations have shown that internal galaxy structures (like bars and spiral arms) can develop more rapidly than secular evolution can explain, and recent JWST observations have found complementary evidence at high redshifts. Theoretical predictions appeal to chaos as an important driver of the internal evolution of galaxies, but the available tools to diagnose chaos require a static potential, comparison orbits, and/or timescales on order of a Hubble time. In this talk, I will present PECCARY (Permutation Entropy and statistiCal Complexity Analysis for astRophYsics), a novel method I developed for identifying and interpreting chaos in astrophysical dynamical systems. I will show preliminary results from PECCARY’s application to disk galaxies and discuss its broader utility for general timeseries analysis.

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