Title: How "Little Red Dots" Broke the Universe (and how we're unbreaking it)

Abstract: One of the biggest mysteries of the early era of JWST's operation has been "Little Red Dots," compact sources with strange V shaped spectral energy distributions and broad emission lines. These sources have been incredibly hard to model, and over the course of three years, leading theories have ranged from over-massive galaxies that assembled Milky Way levels of stellar mass in the first Gyr of cosmic time to over-massive active galactic nuclei that defy models of black hole assembly. I will walk through the brief history of discover in this sources, demonstrating how we have slowly been getting closer and closer to understanding them by leveraging JWST, ALMA, and several other observatories to constrain their panchromatic spectral energy distribution. I will discuss our current best understanding of these sources, and how we might move forward to incorporate them into our picture of galaxy and black hole assembly.

Dr. Adam Smercina, Space Telescope Science Institute

Title: A New Era of Galaxy Evolution using Resolved Stars

Abstract: The varied and dynamic evolutionary histories of galaxies give rise to their stunning diversity in the present-day universe. Inferring these histories requires accessing the information encoded in their longest-lived visible components: stars. We are in an exciting new frontier, with a fleet of current and upcoming observatories capable of accessing the resolved stellar populations within and around external galaxies. In this talk, I will first summarize my efforts to chart the merger histories of nearby galaxies by surveying the stars in their accreted halos, including the exciting potential of the upcoming Roman Space Telescope. I will then discuss my efforts to trace the evolution of these galaxies star formation and structure, particularly as a consequence of their merger histories, through high-resolution surveys of their main bodies. In particular, I will highlight several large programs with JWST, which has opened up an exciting new frontier for this science. Over the next decade, these efforts with JWST and Roman have the potential to transform our view of galaxy evolution. To close, I will discuss how this current pioneering work with JWST will pave way for the next paradigm shift in resolved star science: the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

THE GALEX EXTRAGALACTIC SPECTRA DATA BASE

We have matched objects in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spectroscopic fields with publicly available ultraviolet, optical, and infrared surveys, to construct a photometric and spectroscopic catalog for non-stellar objects with GALEX spectroscopic counterparts. Of the total sample of GALEX spectra recorded in the database, approximately 20\% are determined to reliably correspond to non-stellar objects. These objects have been cross-matched with SDSS, WISE, and 2MASS photometric and spectroscopic survey catalogs, and VISTA and UKIRT near-IR catalogs where available, to construct spectral energy distributions (SED's) from the GALEX-FUV to WISE-w4 magnitudes for all non-stellar objects within the fields. Analysis of 209 fields with at least one object matched in SDSS give a total of 12,020 extragalactic objects, comprising 1974 known QSOs and AGNs, 2274 star-forming galaxies, 6327 quiescent spiral galaxies, and 386 elliptical galaxies.

THE GALEX EXTRAGALACTIC SPECTRA DATA BASE

We have matched objects in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spectroscopic fields with publicly available ultraviolet, optical, and infrared surveys, to construct a photometric and spectroscopic catalog for non-stellar objects with GALEX spectroscopic counterparts. Of the total sample of GALEX spectra recorded in the database, approximately 20\% are determined to reliably correspond to non-stellar objects. These objects have been cross-matched with SDSS, WISE, and 2MASS photometric and spectroscopic survey catalogs, and VISTA and UKIRT near-IR catalogs where available, to construct spectral energy distributions (SED's) from the GALEX-FUV to WISE-w4 magnitudes for all non-stellar objects within the fields. Analysis of 209 fields with at least one object matched in SDSS give a total of 12,020 extragalactic objects, comprising 1974 known QSOs and AGNs, 2274 star-forming galaxies, 6327 quiescent spiral galaxies, and 386 elliptical galaxies.

TBA

TBA

Molecular gas properties in young stellar clusters with a suppressed star cluster wind

In extremely compact and dense star-forming clouds a global star cluster wind could be suppressed. In this case the stellar feedback is unable to expel the leftover gas from the cluster. Young massive stars remain embedded into a dense residual gas and stir it moving in the gravitational well of the system. I shall present a self-consistent model for the molecular gas distribution in such young, enshrouded stellar clusters. It is assumed that the cloud collapse has been terminated and the star formation ceased when a balance between the turbulent pressure and gravity and between the turbulent energy dissipation and regeneration rates has been established. These conditions result in an equation that determines the residual gas density distribution that, in turn, allows one to obtain other characteristics of the leftover gas and the star formation efficiency. Finally, I shall confront this model with D1 molecular cloud and its embedded cluster in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 5253.

Molecular gas properties in young stellar clusters with a suppressed star cluster wind

In extremely compact and dense star-forming clouds a global star cluster wind could be suppressed. In this case the stellar feedback is unable to expel the leftover gas from the cluster. Young massive stars remain embedded into a dense residual gas and stir it moving in the gravitational well of the system. I shall present a self-consistent model for the molecular gas distribution in such young, enshrouded stellar clusters. It is assumed that the cloud collapse has been terminated and the star formation ceased when a balance between the turbulent pressure and gravity and between the turbulent energy dissipation and regeneration rates has been established. These conditions result in an equation that determines the residual gas density distribution that, in turn, allows one to obtain other characteristics of the leftover gas and the star formation efficiency. Finally, I shall confront this model with D1 molecular cloud and its embedded cluster in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 5253.

Reverberation mapping black hole accretion flows

Most of the power from an Active Galactic Nucleus is released close to the black hole, and thus studying the inner accretion flow, at the intersection of inflow and outflow, is essential for understanding how black holes grow and affect galaxy evolution. In the past decade, we have had a breakthrough in how we probe the inner accretion flow, through the discovery of X-ray Reverberation Mapping, where X-rays produced close to the black hole reverberate off inflowing gas. By measuring reverberation time delays, we can quantify the effects of strongly curved space time and the black hole spin, which is key for understanding how efficiently energy can be tapped from the accretion process. In this talk, I will give an overview of this field, and show how extending these spectral-timing techniques to transient accretion events like Tidal Disruption Events and black hole X-ray binaries is helping us probe the formation of X-ray coronae, jets and other relativistic outflows.

Reverberation mapping black hole accretion flows

Most of the power from an Active Galactic Nucleus is released close to the black hole, and thus studying the inner accretion flow, at the intersection of inflow and outflow, is essential for understanding how black holes grow and affect galaxy evolution. In the past decade, we have had a breakthrough in how we probe the inner accretion flow, through the discovery of X-ray Reverberation Mapping, where X-rays produced close to the black hole reverberate off inflowing gas. By measuring reverberation time delays, we can quantify the effects of strongly curved space time and the black hole spin, which is key for understanding how efficiently energy can be tapped from the accretion process. In this talk, I will give an overview of this field, and show how extending these spectral-timing techniques to transient accretion events like Tidal Disruption Events and black hole X-ray binaries is helping us probe the formation of X-ray coronae, jets and other relativistic outflows.