Speaker
Description
Around 90% of the baryons in the Universe lie in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and remain significantly less understood than the matter associated with starlight, such as galaxies. In this talk, I will introduce the Baryon Cycle (ByCycle) project, an upcoming 4MOST-VISTA survey that aims to uncover these hidden baryons. Our survey will consist of high-resolution (R ~ 20000) spectra of a large sample (~1 million) of bright and distant quasars, which will reveal intergalactic and circumgalactic gas found in the line-of-sight through absorption lines. I will present ongoing efforts on the development of machine learning models that will help us process the ~400 spectra that our survey will receive each night. These algorithms find, classify and characterize absorbers in these spectra. Only with such a setup will we be able to study how gas flows in and out of galaxies and their effect on their evolution in unprecedented statistical significance and detail. I will give an overview of the novel science that ByCycle will make possible, its potential impact on galaxy evolution studies, and how the community can benefit from it.