ABSTRACT
Reconstructing the formation and assembly history of galaxies remains one of the central goals of astrophysics. Recent advances in stellar population synthesis modeling have moved the field well beyond the traditional "age and metallicity" framework. By extracting detailed elemental abundance patterns and constraining the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the integrated light of distant galaxies, we gain profound insights into their star formation histories, stellar mass distributions, and dark matter content. In this talk, I will present new results on the stellar IMF and its spatial variation of nearby early-type galaxies from the MASSIVE survey. I will also discuss recent stellar population studies of massive galaxies and their extended environments, highlighting how low-surface-brightness observations reveal the imprints of galaxy formation and assembly in previously inaccessible low-mass regimes. Finally, I will preview lookback studies enabled by the observations from the James Webb Space Telescope.
BIOGRAPHY
Meng Gu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Hong Kong since 2024. Before joining HKU, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Observatories and earlier a Henry Norris Russell fellow at Princeton University. She got her PhD from Harvard University in 2019.
Meng specializes in stellar population synthesis modeling, as well as spectroscopic observations and data reduction. Her research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, with particular interest in the stellar initial mass function of galaxies, the influence of environment on galaxy formation, and the growth and assembly of massive galaxies based on spatially resolved spectroscopy.
Date & Time
Venue
Chair