Sprecher/in: Himansh Rathore

Titel: The LMC-SMC System: A New Laboratory for Galaxy Interactions, Galaxy Dynamics and Dark Matter

Zusammenfassung: The Milky Way’s most massive satellites, the LMC & SMC, have been interacting with each other since the last 6 billion years. The interactions have left both galaxies morphologically and kinematically disturbed. Observational surveys like Gaia-DR3, SDSS-V and VMC have unleashed an era of precision Astronomy, which enables detailed measurements of the disturbed morphology, kinematics and Interstellar Medium of the LMC & SMC, making this system a novel laboratory to study galactic interactions, galactic dynamics and dark matter. However, observations of these galaxies present several unsolved puzzles - like the LMC’s mysterious bar and the SMC’s ambiguous internal structure and kinematics. Theoretical models are urgently needed to interpret the observational datasets. In this talk, I will illustrate with hydrodynamical simulations how a recent (< 200 Myr ago) direct LMC-SMC
collision can simultaneously explain the LMC bar’s puzzling properties as well as the internal structure and kinematics of the SMC. Moreover, I will demonstrate the connection between disk morphology perturbed by collisions to the dark matter properties of the interacting galaxies, thus providing a new testbed for dark matter physics. I will conclude with an overview of ongoing state-of-the-art computational modeling efforts to better harness the vast observational datasets of this new laboratory.

Anmerkung: This is a remote talk!

• Datum:
  21. Oktober 2025, 15:00 – 16:00
  
  
• Ort:

  AIP; Leibnizhaus, Seminarraum
  Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/893040642?pwd=UU9Hd0V5azQvMmZhQWV1cU9wbnNvQT09

  
  
• Kontakt:
  Lara Cullinane
  lcullinane@aip.de