Star formation law of nearby galaxies

Star formation is a key physical process of baryonic matters, and plays crucial roles in driving galaxy formation and evolution. The observed relationship between star formation rates and gas masses, star formation law, offers a powerful empirical way in understanding star formation and is widely invoked in numerical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. In the past decade, the rich multi-wavelength data of nearby galaxies have enabled well characterizations of this gas-SFR relationship. I will talk about some of my recent works of star formation law, and show that in addition to the gas density, other factors may also regulate star formation such as existing stars, metallicities etc. This challenges the traditional SFR-gas relationship, implying that different physical mechanisms may play roles in driving star formation during galaxy evolution.

Speaker: 
Yong Shi (Nanjing University)
Place: 
KIAA-PKU Auditorium
Host: 
Zhuo Li
Time: 
Thursday, March 12, 2015 - 4:00pm