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OATS-DAUT SEMINAR
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Speaker: Tommaso Treu (Univ. California Santa Barbara, USA)

Title: Dark matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies

Date: Wednesday, December 17th, 2009
Time: 12:00
Venue: Villa Bazzoni

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Abstract:
I present the latest scientific results from SLACS, the Sloan Lenses ACS Survey. Lenses are first identified spectroscopically and then confirmed via Hubble Space Telescope imaging. The ongoing survey has found almost 100 galaxy scale strong lenses to date. As a result of the selection procedure most lenses are galaxy-galaxy lenses, with extended features (Einstein Rings), making this sample especially well suited to study the properties of the lensing (early-type) galaxies and their dark matter halos. Extensive follow-up is ongoing with the Keck and VLT Telescopes to obtain spatially resolved kinematics and perform a joint lensing and dynamical analysis to reconstruct the dark and luminous mass distribution and properties of the stellar orbits. I discuss the results in terms of their implication for understanding the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies and our understanding of dark matter. I also present some recent results on the nature and interactive properties of dark matter from a study of merging clusters of galaxies.
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contact: Paolo Tozzi (OATS)