Shaun Brown: The formation, growth and evolution of the smallest galaxies

Tuesday 27 Jan 2026, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FB55 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Dwarf galaxies offer a powerful probe of galaxy formation over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Their shallow potentials make them particularly sensitive to many forms of feedback, while their early formation histories provide a detailed view of star formation in the early universe. While these systems offer promising laboratories to test various galaxy formation models there is not yet a consensus on the key physical mechanisms necessary to produce a realistic population of these galaxies.

 

To address these questions, I present a new simulation suite of 65 dwarf galaxies run at an unprecedented resolution of 4 M_sun using the LYRA model which is able to fully resolve individual stars and their subsequent supernova. These systems are self consistently evolved in a fully cosmological context modelling the initial collapse of these structures, the formation of their first stars, their quenching due to reionisation and as well as dynamically evolving their stellar populations through to today. In this talk I will present some initial results of these new simulations, particularly focusing on why some of the smallest dark matter haloes are able to form start while others remain truly dark. The exquisite detail offered by these simulations make them an invaluabletool for further understanding the formation of both classical and ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, as well as making key predictions for both current and future surveys, such as DESI, LSST and Euclid.

 

About the speaker: 
Shaun Brown is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Computational Cosmology of Durham University (UK). His research interests are galaxy and structure formation, in particular exploring the predictions of the standard model of cosmology on small scales, the nature of dark matter and formation of low mass (dwarf) galaxies, using cosmological simulations.