I am currently studying star formation in the low metallicity environments of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using FIR Spitzer, H-alpha, HI, and CO data with Prof. Alberto Bolatto. My aim is to determine how the environment in these galaxies affects the star formation law. Ulitmately, a better understanding of the relation of star formation rate to molecular and atomic gas will lead to a more accurate star formation law, necessary for models of galaxy evolution. |
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Research
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Plot of surface density of total gas vs. surface density of the star formation rate (SFR) with linear filled contours showing our results from the SMC. Overlaid linear line contours show the result of removing diffuse H-alpha emission. The thin dashed lines show the depletion percent in 10^8 years. The thick dashed line shows the model from Krumholz, McKee, and Tunlinson(2009) with c=1 and Z=0.2. |
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