Research at Rutgers

At Rutgers University I work for Dr. Eric Gawiser in the Physics and Astronomy Department. I have worked with Holly Christensen (summer 2015) and Jiaoyue Yuan (fall 2015-spring 2017), and am currently working with Juliette Stecenko and Lana Eid. The project involves search for Lyman-alpha emitting (LAE) galaxies at z= 2.1 to 3.1. We use the SDSS1030 and MUSYC CW1255+01 fields. I have worked most closely with the CW1255+1 in the OII filter.

The first step of this process was to reduce the data using the IRAF software package. This involved utilizing flat fielding, background subtraction (global and local), and noise reduction programs. I also have utilized Source Extractor to obtain lists of possible light sources (both extended and point sources) and then used IDL programming to extract our finalized candidate list.

. When we finalized out candidate list utilizing Source Extractor and IDL codes utilizing magnitude, color magnitude, and other minor cutoffs, we did clustering analysis using the Landy-Szalay estimator. We also obtained rough bounds on the masses of the dark matter halos of the galaxies as well through the clustering analysis. The clustering analysis utilized was a rough estimate with more stringent parameters being applied later in the process.