Stéphane Charlot's Homepage
I am currently working at the Max-Planck
Institut fuer Astrophysik, where my research is funded by a Sofja
Kovalevskaja award from the Alexander-von-Humboldt
Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the
Programme for Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German
Government. During the three years of duration of this program, I am on
leave of absence from my home institution in France, the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.
Research Project
The main goal of my research program at the MPA is to interpret the
spectra of galaxies in the very large surveys currently being assembled
by several major international consortia, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the VIRMOS-VLT Deep Survey
(VVDS), the MUnich
Near-IR Cluster Survey (MUNICS), and the upcoming Galaxy Evolution Explorer
(GALEX) and Space Infrared
Telescope Facility (SIRTF) Surveys . This interpretation is based
on
a new generation of spectral evolution models that I have recently
developed in collaboration with several colleagues including Gustavo
Bruzual (CIDA, Venezuela), Michael
Fall (STScI, Baltimore) and
Marcella Longhetti (OAB, Italy).
The aim is to understand the physical processes that trigger star
formation, whether star formation occurs continuously or in bursts,
whether galaxies hold onto the heavy elements they produce or eject a
substantial fraction, how dust is distributed within galaxies, how the
masses of galaxies evolve with time, and how their ages and star
formation histories depend on luminosity, morphological type and
environment.
You can check out here
examples of how we plan to interpret the high-quality spectra gathered
by modern spectroscopic galaxy surveys such as the SDSS.
Upcoming events
We are organizing an International
Conference on Stellar Populations in Garching on 6-10 October 2003 that is funded
primarily by the Sofja Kovalevskaja program, but also in part by
the European Southern Observatory.
Release of GALAXEV (BC2003), a library of evolutionary
stellar population synthesis models computed using the new isochrone
synthesis code of
Bruzual & Charlot (2003, MNRAS, in press).