Course Objectives:
The aim of this course is to introduce you, the students, to recent
developments at high redshift (z ≥ 5) and, through presentations
followed by discussion with active participation by all students, determine
where the active areas of high-redshift research are at present. Textbooks,
by their nature, are out of date at the time of their publication. In this
course we aim to bridge the gap between passive acquisition of knowledge and
active PhD research by reading and discussing papers from the professional
literature. The emphasis will lie on the development and uncertainties of
current scientific theory and method.
Oral reports on the papers selected will be presented in class at the rate
of one ~45 minute presentation per week (assuming the number of students is
10 or less). Oral reports by senior graduate students, postdocs and/or
talks by visiting scientists would be on a voluntary and as-time-permits
basis only. Each report should consist of a general introduction covering
the scope of the paper and where it fits within the larger field of research
of which the paper is part, followed by a more detailed summary of the
original research presented in the paper and a discussion of its impact.
Each presentation is followed by time for questions and answers, and
discussion by the students, using questions e-mailed to me in advance of
each class as a guide.
Dates for the presentations(s) by each student will be assigned within the
first week of the first class — first come, first serve (see the
Seminar Schedule below). The choice of paper to discuss will be up to the
student, but certain restrictions and requirements will apply
(see also Tips.., below). I'll be happy
to discuss that choice.
Given the time and nature of this seminar course, it is fine to bring your
lunch.
Course Grades:
70% of the final grade
will be based on the presentation, where the emphasis lies more on content
and clarity than on how fancy the presentation looks. Each student is
responsible for providing me no later than one week
before their scheduled presentation the full bibliographic
reference to a paper of their choice (i.e., the last possible moment will be
in class the week before).
A full bibliographic reference includes at the very least the name of the
lead author, publication year, name or abbreviation of the journal, volume,
and page number.
I will place a link on the class web-page to an electronic version of this
paper (PDF/Postscript), so all students can download and read it, and
formulate questions.
Non-timely submission of a reference will result in a
reduction of the grade. Also, after class, the student must send me
the electronic presentation, preferably as a ≤2.0 Mb PDF file with
all fonts included (if necessary, remove background images to reduce the
file size when exporting to PDF from PowerPoint or similar presentation
software).
I will create a link to it into the following table (see Seminar
Schedule below), so it can be viewed and consulted later.
30% of the final grade
will be based on the participation by each student in the discussion of each
paper, as demonstrated by the posing of non-trivial questions and reasoning
demonstrating the use of the scientific method. Each student, except the
student giving the presentation, must prepare and e-mail me
at least two non-trivial questions regarding
the paper no later than 5:00PM of the Thursday before
each class (except if that class is a Special Seminar by a visiting
scientist).
Presentations:
For the computer-based presentations (i.e., HTML, PDF, Power Point, etc..),
a laptop computer running Redhat 9 Linux (with Mozilla 1.4.2
browser, Acrobat Reader 5.0 [PDF], and OpenOffice 1.0.2 [PPT])
will be available in the classroom, but students are free to bring and
use their own Windows, Linux or Macintosh laptop. If you use a Macintosh,
remember to bring a DVI-to-VGA adaptor to connect to the LCD projector.
Note, that the projector provides a 1024×768 pixel standard field
of view, so you may have to adjust your display settings if you have a
wide-screen laptop. It is recommended to practice this in advance of your
presentation.
If you prepare a PowerPoint presentation and do
not plan to use your own laptop, send your
presentation no later than Thursday afternoon
preceding class to me by e-mail as an attachment, so I can check that it
displays properly: proprietary fonts from Microsoft, Adobe, and other
commercial founderies (e.g., math and greek symbols, fancy fonts) often
don't display or are substituted by unreadable characters on Open
Source machines!
Tips for finding a suitable paper:
For a 45 min presentation, single 4 or 5-page
Letters are not suitable (but three related ones might well be).
Typically, papers should be the equivalent of 15–20 pages in a main
journal (multi-page tables or atlasses of figures, and the list of
references don't count toward this number; manuscripts in pre-print format
should be at least 3× as many pages).
Papers that had/have a large impact will be cited by many other authors.
Papers with few or no citations, or mostly
self-citations by the authors, may not be suitable for
discussion. Papers are required to (1) have
been published in a peer reviewed journal or been accepted for publication
in a peer reviewed journal and (2) have at
least 1 citation by researchers other than the authors of that paper.
Discussion of a paper that recently appeared on 'astro-ph' may be OK if
the above conditions are met, and the "Comments" give a specific
volume/issue of the peer-reviewed journal where such paper is scheduled to
appear.
Although not a complete depository of all scientific literature in astronomy
and astrophysics, none the less, astronomy as a science is blessed in having
a very large, full-text digital library: the NASA Astrophysics Data System
(ADS) (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html).
For example, a search for a paper that I discussed a while back returned:
A full text, printable version of this paper may be obtained by clicking
on the "F" link (or by clicking on the full
reference link or "A" link, and following the
links on the abstract page that it opens). Often,
there is also a "G" that points to GIF-format
scans of each page of the paper or an "E" that
points to an HTML version (both may come handy to extract/retrieve a digital
version of a figure, table or equation to insert in your presentation).
To check the number of citations, one can click the link marked
"C".
Full resolution Postscript versions of figures can often be found on the
LANL (arXiv.org) preprint server:
(http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph) by searching for the lead
author(s) and selecting [..., other] as the
download format and then Source (this will allow you to download a
tar-ball, which includes the originally submitted figures). Note, that the
preprint can be of an earlier year than the actual year of publication.
The following is the schedule of presentations:
Fall 2007 Seminar Schedule
Date
| Person
| Paper
| Title + link to presentation
|
8/24
| Rolf Jansen
|
| Introduction to the Class
|
8/29
| Renu Malhotra (UofA)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
The Bombardment History of the Terrestrial Planets
|
8/31
| Brenda Frye (Dublin U.)
|
| Special seminar (PSF-226
12:15–1:30PM)
Strongly-lensed Galaxies from 3 < z < 5
|
9/07
| Michael Rutkowski
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
|
Gravity Wave background due to black hole formation and Cosmic
Ray-generated 6Li from Pop III,
de Araujo et al. 2002, MNRAS 330, 561 and
Rollinde et al. 2006, ApJ 651, 658
|
9/12
| Craig Wheeler (UTexas, Austin)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
The Lives and Deaths of Supernovae
|
9/14
| Natalie Hinkel
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
|
A Little Bit of Pop II, A Little Bit of Pop III,
Mackey et al. 2003, ApJ 586, 1 and Wyithe & Loeb 2006,
Nature 441, 322
|
9/21
| Simon Porter
|
PS/PDF
|
Gravitational Collapse and Neutrino Emission of Population III
Massive Stars,
Nakazato, Sumiyoshi, Yamada 2006, ApJ 645, 519
|
9/26
| Diane Wooden (NASA Ames)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
Comets are Mixtures of Fire and Ice: Implications for Radial Mixing in
our Protoplanetary Disk
|
9/28
| William Gray
|
PS/PDF
|
Formation of z ~ 6 Quasars from Hierarchical Galaxy
Mergers, Li, Hernquist, Robertson, et al. 2007, ApJ 665, 187
|
10/03
| Jay Melosh (UofA)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
Planetary Impacts and the Origin of the Earth and Moon
|
10/05
| Jon Oiler
|
PS/PDF
|
Gamma-Ray Bursts as a Probe of the Very High Redshift Universe,
Lamb & Reichart 2000, ApJ 536, 1
|
10/12
|
|
| No class
|
10/19
| Lifang Xia
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
|
The reionization history at high redshifts,
Haiman & Holder 2003, ApJ 595, 1 and
Holder, Haiman, et al. 2003, ApJ 595, 13
|
10/24
| Bruce Balik (UWashington)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
New Tricks of Old Stars
|
10/26
| Nahks Tr'Ehnl
|
PS/PDF
|
An Empirically Calibrated Model for Interpreting the Evolution of
Galaxies during the Reionization Era,
Stark, Loeb, & Ellis 2007, ApJ 668, 627
|
11/02
| Vithal Tilvi
|
PS/PDF
|
The Properties of Lyα Emitting Galaxies in Hierarchical Galaxy
Formation Models,
Le Delliou, Lacey, Baugh, & Morris 2006, MNRAS 365, 712
|
11/09
| Emily McLinden
|
PS/PDF
|
Gemini Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Luminous z ~ 6
Quasars,
Jiang, Fan, Vestergaard, et al. 2007, AJ 134, 1150
|
11/14
| Rogier Windhorst (ASU)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
JWST: How Can It Measure First Light, Reionization, and Galaxy
Assembly?
|
11/16
|
|
| No class
|
11/23
|
|
| No class — Thanksgiving Day weekend
|
11/28
| Jean Turner (UCLA)
|
| SESE Colloquium (PSF-101 3:40PM)
Extreme Star Formation in Nearby Galaxies
|
11/30
| Michael Pagano
|
PS/PDF,
PS/PDF
|
Simulating cosmic reionization at large scales – I + II:
Geometry & 21cm emission features,
Iliev, Mellema, et al. 2006, MNRAS 369, 1625 and
Mellema, Iliev, et al. 2006, MNRAS 372, 679
|
Click on the links below for the Astrophysics Seminar schedules and student
presentations of previous semesters:
- Spring 2007 (Jansen) —
Nearby Galaxies: How well do we know our Cosmic Backyard?
- Fall 2006
(Windhorst) — Black Hole Growth & Galaxy Assembly: From
First Light & Reionization to the Present
- Spring 2006 (Jansen) —
Planet Formation and Our Milky Way Galaxy
- Fall 2005 (Jansen) —
Star Formation and Chemical Enrichment: From the First Stars to
Present-day Galaxies
Last update: Dec 3 2007 [RAJ]
|