Stephanie Campbell wins OUP Academic Poster Prize at NAM 2021

The Royal Astronomical Society has announced that the winner of the OUP Academic Poster Prize is Stephanie Campbell, a Astrophysics PhD student at our School of Physics and Astronomy. Stephanie won the prize for their poster titled "Using HI gas to Model Dark Matter Halos in MaNGA"!

Short summary:
Accurate measurements of the dark matter content of a large, diverse sample of galaxies can provide valuable constraints on the cosmological model. IFU surveys observe the stellar kinematics within galaxies, which can be used to build dynamical models and measure the dark matter content in these galaxies. However, stellar kinematics only trace the innermost regions of the dark matter halo, and fail to constrain the halo parameters in the outer regions. Neutral Hydrogen is known to extend beyond the stellar regions in a cold rotating disc. These regions are very dark matter dominated, so can provide strong constraints on the dark matter content.

We have been exploring the potential for methods which can make use of this extra information to improve dynamical models, with the minimum observation required. We have tested a method which combines Jeans modelling with MaNGA IFU observations and the addition of single dish Hydrogen observations from Green Bank Telescope, as part of the HI-MaNGA followup programme. We outline results from testing this method, and future plans to test further improvements with spatially resolved HI data.