Science Week 2016

5 Dec 2016, 09:00 → 8 Dec 2016, 18:00 Europe/Berlin

New seminar room (Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics)

Andreas Burkert (USM), Andreas Müller (TUM), Stephan Paul (TU-München)

For the 10th time, the Cluster hosts its annual 'Science Week'. From 5 to 8 December 2016 Cluster scientists and invited guests will present their current research work in the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, particle and nuclear physics. The Science Week is an interdisciplinary event and directed to all scientists who want to gain insight into the current state of all Cluster research areas A-I. Everybody is welcome.

Program highlights
Monday, Dec 5, 11:10: Universe PhD Award "Experiment" 2016 Prize-giving
Tuesday, Dec 6, 11:00: Universe PhD Award "Theory" 2016 Prize-giving
Tuesday, Dec 6, 18:30: Conference dinner and poster session
Tuesday, Dec 6, 20:00: Highlight talk "Emergence of Life"
Wednesday, Dec 7, 13:30: Highlight talk "Gravitational Waves with LIGO"
Wednesday, Dec 7, 14:30: General Assembly of all Cluster members and Elections
Thursday, Dec 8, all-day: Research Area Overview talks

** No Registration for participants necessary **
** No Fees **

Scientific posters:
Please register your poster at andreas.mueller@universe-cluster.de (space is limited). We will provide template files here.

Venue:
New seminar room at MPI for Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstrasse, Garching

Update 16 Nov: Program now online!

List of Abstracts (pdf) sorted by last name ScWe2016_Titles+abstracts.pdf

Poster template LaTeX LaTeX.zip

Poster template pdf LaTeX pdfLaTeX.zip

Poster template ppt ScWe2016_template_powerpoint.ppt

Poster template pptx ScWe2016_template_powerpoint.pptx

Science Week 2016 Flyer (pdf) ScienceWeekFlyer2016.pdf

Monday 5 December

09:00 → 09:10 Opening

Speakers: Andreas Burkert (LMU), Stephan Paul (TUM)

09:10 → 09:40 ATLAS Upgrades for Physics at High-Luminosity LHC and Outlook

The next step at the high energy frontier in particle physics is the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN to about an order of magnitude higher luminosity over the next ten years which will extend the new physics reach significantly. To operate at such high luminosity, the LHC experiments have to be completely refurbished. The central tracking detectors will be replaced as a whole. Triggering and data acquisition are confronted with a new level of challenges. The physics potential of High-Luminosity LHC and the detector developments for the required upgrade of the ATLAS detector will be discussed. The new detector developments are also interesting to assess the possibilities of experimentation at a future hadron collider with another order of magnitude higher energy and luminosity.

Speaker: Hubert Kroha (MPP)

Slides Kroha.pdf

09:40 → 10:10 Void dynamics as a probe of cosmology and gravity

Redshift surveys measure the location of millions of galaxies in the observable Universe, thereby constructing a three-dimensional map of its large-scale structure. This structure is characterized by dense clusters of galaxies, connected by filaments and sheets of lower density. The remaining and dominant volume within this cosmic web is taken up by voids, vast regions of relatively empty space. I will highlight some recent advances in modeling average void density and velocity profiles, as well as their anisotropic shapes in redshift space on the basis of simulations and mock galaxy catalogs. While clusters, filaments and sheets have entered various stages of nonlinearity in the past, voids represent structures whose dynamic evolution can be described remarkably well by linear theory, suggesting them to be among the most pristine objects to consider for future studies on the nature of dark energy, dark matter and gravity. Nico will present first results in this context, obtained via the analysis of galaxy survey data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Speaker: Nico Hamaus (LMU)

Slides Hamaus.pdf

10:10 → 10:40 Coffee

10:40 → 11:10 Dark Matter with t-channel mediators

The question about the identity of dark matter is a major puzzle and may point to new physics beyond the Standard Model. Currently, a number of experiments are sensitive to an interaction strength of dark matter with known particles that is expected within the paradigm of a weakly interacting massive particle. In oder to take advantage of the diverse search strategies, it is instructive to compare them within simplified model frameworks. In this talk Mathias will discuss the interplay of indirect with direct and collider searches for a dark matter particle that interacts with quarks and leptons via a t-channel mediator.

Speaker: Mathias Garny (TUM)

Slides Garny.pdf

11:10 → 11:30 Universe PhD Award 2016 (Experiment)

Speaker: Wolfgang Dünnweber (LMU)

11:30 → 12:00 Awardee talk: Optical Properties of Liquid Noble Gas Scintillators

Speaker: Alexander Neumeier (formerly TUM)

Slides Neumeier.pdf

12:00 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:30 Observing Globular Cluster Dynamics with Blue Straggler Stars

Globular clusters are expected to undergo dynamical processes introduced through stellar encounters which will lead to a mass segregation between heavy and light stars. Measuring this segregation proved challenging though due to the need for high-resolution observations of multiple telescopes. Philipp will present a new approach to observe the mass segregation of cluster IC 4499 directly by using Blue Straggler Stars. He will compare these results to estimations using its density profile from which he calculated the expected relaxation time from N-body models.

Speaker: Philipp Hauptmann (MPE/ESO)

Slides Hauptmann.pdf

14:30 → 15:00 New physics searches in B meson decays

Mesons containing beauty quarks have a unique diversity of decay modes, the precision measurements of which allow to test the electroweak Standard Model and potentially detect virtual effects of new heavy particles beyond the Standard Model. Recently, several measurements of such decay modes both at electron-positron B factories as well as at LHC have exhibited tensions with the Standard Model expectations. David will give an overview of these tensions and their possible interpretations in terms of physics beyond the Standard Model, as well as possible explanations by effects within the Standard Model.

Speaker: David Straub (TUM)

Slides Straub.pdf

15:00 → 15:30 Computational Star Formation with GANDALF

GANDALF is a new hydrodynamics code developed in Munich and Garching in collaboration with other groups in Germany and the UK. We present a summary of some of the recent scientific studies via simulations, such as investigating Triggered Star Formation through cloud-cloud collisions, filament fragmentation and more. We also discuss some newly implemented features, both numerical algorithms and additional physics modules, and why they could prove invaluable for future numerical studies.

Speaker: David Hubber (LMU)

Slides Hubber.pdf

15:30 → 15:45 Coffee

15:45 → 16:15 Search for low-mass Dark Matter with the CRESST experiment

The CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) experiment, located in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS, Italy) aims at the direct detection of dark matter (DM) particles. Scintillating CaWO4 crystals operated as cryogenic detectors are used as target material for DM-nucleus scattering. The simultaneous measurement of the phonon signal from the CaWO4 crystal and the emitted scintillation light in a separate cryogenic light detector is used to discriminate backgrounds from a possible dark matter signal. Since cryogenic detectors are very sensitive to small energy deposits induced, e.g., by the interactions of light DM particles, the experiment is able to probe the low-mass region of the parameter space for spin-independent DM-nucleus scattering with high sensitivity. Recent results of the CRESST-II experiment — obtained using a 300 g detector with a nuclear recoil energy threshold of 307 eV — provide the world best limit for DM particle masses below 1.7 GeV/c^2. The CRESST-III experiment aims to significantly improve the sensitivity for low-mass DM particles by using optimised detector modules. Each module consists of a ~24 g CaWO4 target crystal — with a nuclear recoil energy threshold of ~100 eV — and a 20x20 mm^2 Silicon-on-Sapphire light detector. Phase 1 of the CRESST-III experiment — where 10 detector modules with a total target mass of 240 g will be operated for 1 year — started taking data in August 2016. In this talk Michael will present the most recent results of the CRESST-II experiment as well as the status and future perspectives of the CRESST-III experiment.

Speaker: Michael Willers (TUM)

Slides Willers.pdf

16:15 → 16:45 Calibration of Dark Energy Survey data using Gaia spectra

Euclid photometric external data shall be provided in order to limit bias in photometry for PSF modeling to less than 0:2% on scales used to model the PSF. In this work, we simulate the calibration of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) photometric data using Gaia low resolution spectroscopic data (blue and red photometers) to fulfill the mentioned requirement. DES catalogs of stars are simulated using a model of stellar population synthesis in the Galaxy. A particular linear color dependent model for systematic in the photometry of stars is induced into the mock catalogs. We show that the remaining systematic after calibration of the DES data using Gaia data is less than 1.43, 1.46, 1.28 and 1.20 millimagnitudes in g, r, i and z bands.

Speaker: Seyed Mohammad Mirkazemi (LMU)

Slides Mirkazemi.pdf

17:15 → 18:15 Munich Physics Colloquium: The origin of mass of the visible universe

Speaker: Zoltan Fodor (U Wuppertal)

Tuesday 6 December

09:00 → 09:30 Probing the Quark Gluon Plasma with heavy quarks

The ALICE experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider is dedicated to studies of heavy-ion collisions. It is aimed to recreate in the laboratory the initial conditions of our universe microseconds after the Big Bang, when hadronic matter was deconfined in a new state of matter called the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). This endeavour challenges our experimental and theoretical capabilities in many ways. In this talk Torsten as an ALICE experimentalist as well as Nora and Antonio as theorists working on the field theory of strong interaction at finite temperature, will report on the state of the art of the investigation of QGP probed by bound states of a heavy quark and a heavy antiquark.

Speakers: Antonio Vairo (TUM), Nora Brambilla (TUM), Torsten Dahms (TUM)

Slides Dahms+Vairo.pdf

09:30 → 10:00 Understanding Non-geometric heterotic string compactifications via F-Theory

In this talk, we will first introduce one of the many dualities in string/M-theory that is to say the duality between heterotic string theory and F-theory/IIB string theory. Having this duality established, we will show how it can be used to explore string compactifications which are not well understood, e.g. non-geometric heterotic compactifications, by mapping them to well-behaved F-theory models.

Speaker: Christoph Mayrhofer (LMU)

Slides Mayrhofer.pdf

10:00 → 10:20 Understanding planet formation with graphics cards

After a brief overview of the various C2PAP projects Fred contributed to, he focus on the work to understand planet formation in protoplanetary disks done by Leonardo Testi and Marco Tazzari (both ESO). In a 2016 GPU hackathon, they ported code that computes a prediction of visibilities to be compared with, for example, data from the ALMA telescope. Fred will report on the significant speed-ups and the challenges in transitioning from serial to massively parallel.

Speaker: Frederik Beaujean (LMU)

Slides Beaujean.pdf

10:20 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 11:30 Universe PhD Award 2016 (Theory)

Speaker: Peter Ring (TUM)

11:30 → 12:00 Awardee talk: Effective field theories for heavy Majorana neutrinos in a thermal bath

Speaker: Simone Biondini (formerly TUM)

Slides Biondini.pdf

12:00 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:30 Cosmology with Gravitational Lens Time Delays

Strong gravitational lens systems with measured time delays between the multiple images can be used to determine the "time-delay distance" to the lens, which is primarily sensitive to the Hubble constant. Measuring the Hubble constant is crucial for inferring properties of dark energy, spatial curvature of the Universe and neutrino physics. A program initiated to measure the Hubble constant to <3.5% in precision from gravitational lens time delays is in progress, and Sherry will present the current results and their implications. She will also show the exciting discovery of the first strongly lensed supernova that has offered a rare opportunity to perform a true blind test of the modeling techniques. Sherry will show the bright prospects of gravitational lens time delays as an independent and competitive cosmological probe.

Speaker: Sherry Suyu (MPA)

Slides Suyu.pdf

14:30 → 15:00 Mass extinctions and supernova explosions

A nearby supernova (SN) explosion could have negatively influenced life on Earth, maybe even been responsible for mass extinctions. Mass extinction poses a significant extinction of numerous species on Earth, as recorded in the paleontologic, paleoclimatic, and geological records of our planet. Depending on the distance between the Sun and the SN, different types of threats have to be considered, such as ozone depletion on Earth, causing increased exposure to the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, or the direct exposure of lethal X-rays. Another indirect effect is cloud formation, induced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere which results in a drop in the Earth’s temperature, causing major glaciations of the Earth. The discovery of highly intensive gamma ray bursts (GRBs), which could be connected to SNe, initiated further discussions on possible life-threatening events in Earth’s history. The probability that GRBs hit the Earth is very low. Nevertheless, a past interaction of Earth with GRBs and/or SNe cannot be excluded and might even have been responsible for past extinction events.

Speaker: Gunther Korschinek (TUM)

Slides Korschinek.pdf

15:00 → 15:30 C2PAP for particle physics: Multi-threaded event processing

The C2PAP group contributes significantly to experimental particle physics. Given the evolution of computing towards multicore processors, we are helping with the development of multithreaded event processing on ATLAS. Parallelism will be exploited both within events and across events, with data dependencies visible to the scheduler. Additionally, the C2PAP group is trying to use machine learning to improve analyses, and to speed up the statistical analysis of experimental data. Finally, the C2PAP cluster is being used extensively as a computing resource by both the ATLAS and Belle II collaborations.

Speaker: Jovan Mitrevski (LMU)

Slides Mitrevski.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 Coffee

16:00 → 16:30 A novel study connecting astrophysical messengers

A novel study connecting UHECRs, neutrinos, and gamma-rays is presented. The objective is to identify common counterparts of the three astrophysical messengers. Neutrinos are used as intermediaries to identify possible sites of hadronic acceleration of cosmic rays. Subsequently, these objects are correlated against UHECRs detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array, scanning in gamma ray flux and angular separation between sources and cosmic rays. A maximal excess of 80 cosmic rays (41.9 expected) is observed for the second catalog of hard Fermi-LAT (2FHL) objects of blazars of the high synchroton peak type. This corresponds to a deviation from the null-hypothesis of 3.26 sigma. No excess is observed for objects not in spatial connection with neutrinos.

Speaker: Stefan Coenders (A novel study connecting astrophysical messengers)

Slides Coenders.pdf

16:30 → 17:00 The Milky Way in the Age of Gaia

Our Galaxy, the Milky Way (MW), is currently the subject of extraordinary observational effort in astrophysics, both with ESA's unique Gaia mission and with a multitude of ground-based surveys. The MW is the only galaxy whose formation history can be studied star-by-star. There is widespread belief that we stand at the edge of a revolution in our understanding of the MW. In the last few years, we have learnt that the MW is a strongly barred galaxy, in that the region dominated by the Galactic bar reaches 3/4 out to the Sun and contains 70% of the MW's stars. We have learnt how to construct dynamical models to fit survey data in the barred MW, and from them derived the first constraints on the dark matter halo profile in the central MW. We have also learnt about multiple stellar populations in the Galactic bulge and bar, and how to reconstruct their different spatial and kinematic distributions. With the impending new data, we expect to map the orbit distributions of stars with different chemical abundances and ages, thereby providing strong constraints on galaxy formation models and the origin of the Galactic stellar populations.

Speaker: Ortwin Gerhard (MPE)

Slides Gerhard.pdf

17:00 → 17:30 String Theory and Beyond: How strings alter our understanding of spacetime

String theory is a very rich and interesting framework attempting to give an almost complete picture of fundamental physics. Felix will start by giving a basic overview of the key concepts of string theory. He will discuss the necessity of extra dimensions and highlight some peculiar features of strings. Then he will explain how our notion of spacetime can change if we probe it by extended objects like strings instead of pointlike particles. This allows him to introduce an exciting novel formulation of fundamental physics which is a natural consequence of having extra dimensions and extended objects.

Speaker: Felix Rudolph (LMU)

Slides Rudolph.pdf

17:30 → 18:00 Search for diboson resonances at the LHC

The Standard Model (SM) has been extremely successful in the last decades describing the interactions between elementary particles at the highest energies. However, it is known that the theory is not valid in the extension to the grand unification of forces, and new physics phenomena are inherently expected. Many of the possible extensions to the SM predict new heavy particles that decay into two massive bosons. Hence, diboson resonances represent a model-independent, generic approach to search for new physics phenomena in the context of the SM. In 2015, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was put back into operation for proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. A multitude of searches for diboson resonances have been performed. They cover final states with different numbers of leptons and jets, where new jet substructure techniques have been employed to disentangle the hadronic decay products. An overview of the latest results will be given.

Speaker: Felix Müller (MPP)

Slides FMueller.pdf

18:00 → 18:30 Galaxies and the ISM: the ALMA view

ALMA has the capability to revolutionise our understanding of the ISM in high-redshift galaxies. Gergely will present recent advancements in galaxy formation models that track the molecular gas and dust content of galaxies that ALMA will probe. He will compare these models to recent ALMA observations and discuss their successes and failures.

Speaker: Gergely Popping (ESO)

Slides Popping.pdf

18:30 → 20:00 Reception and Poster Session

20:00 → 21:00 Highlight Talk: Testing the Emergence of Life in the Lab

The Origin of Life is one of the fundamental, unsolved riddles of modern science. The history of the first living molecules reaches back not only the 4 billion years on planet Earth, but way back into the creation of complex molecules in space, which again are strongly shaped by the boundary conditions of the formation of the universe and even the conditions at the big bang. Can we establish this thin thread of life through times using experimentally testable hypotheses? Non-equilibrium processes are crucial along this long way hugely different scales. How could the first molecules keep their information despite the strong equilibration force of the second law of thermodynamics? It is straightforward to argue that the first living molecules had to be pushed towards life by a natural non-equilibrium setting. Dieter Braun wants to give an overview over the field and focus on the overarching importance of physical mechanisms such as spontaneous symmetry breaking and large scale multiparticle simulations. He and his group argue along a chain of experimental evidences how temperature gradients across porous rock should be able to drive molecular evolution, i.e. to create the combined replication and selection of genetic molecules towards ever increasing complexity. Life managed to preserve its sequence information over four billions years, not much less than the age of the universe. How is the seemingly impossible preservation of sequence information possible? Can we understand the astronomical processes which created both the molecular and the planetary boundary condition that allowed life to emerge? We are getting close to answer this question through lab experiments in recent years.

Speaker: Dieter Braun (LMU)

Slides Braun.pdf

Wednesday 7 December

09:00 → 09:30 Search for massive long-lived particles at LHC

Many theories beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of massive long-lived particles that could be observed with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Dedicated searches are required to accommodate the distinct signatures of those new particles. The search efforts carried out at ATLAS address different lifetimes, from particles that live only long enough to form a displaced vertex up to particles that traverse all of the detector before decaying. The talk summarizes the theoretical motivation along with an overview of currently ongoing long-lived particle searches and presents recent results from a search for stable massive particles as an example.

Speaker: Jochen Heinrich (LMU)

Slides Heinrich.pdf

09:30 → 10:00 First results from GERDA Phase II and plans beyond

An observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would allow to shed light onto the particle nature of neutrinos. GERDA (GERmanium Detector Array) is operating isotopically enriched high purity germanium detectors bare in liquid argon and is aiming to perform a background-free search for this process in Ge-76. A signal would manifest in a mono-energetic peak in the summed electron spectrum. GERDA is located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) of INFN in Italy and follows a staged approach. In Phase II 35.6 kg of enriched germanium detectors are operated. The application of active background rejection methods based on a liquid argon veto system and novel germanium detectors with advanced pulse shape discrimination performance - both developed with support of the Universe Cluster - allowed to reduce the background index to the intended level of 10^-3 cts/(keV*kg*yr). This is world-best if weighted by the narrow signal energy region of the detectors. In the first five month 10.8 kg*yr of exposure were accumulated. No signal has been found and together with data from Phase I a new limit for the neutrinoless double beta decay half-life of Ge-76 of 5.3*10^25 yr could be established. Phase II data taking is ongoing and will allow the exploration of half-lifes in the 10^26 yr regime within the next years. The experimental program of a newly formed collaboration aims to increase the enriched detector mass to 200 kg and subsequently to 1 ton, revealing a discovery potential of half-lifes significantly longer than 10^27 yr.

Speaker: Christoph Wiesinger (TUM)

Slides Wiesinger.pdf

10:00 → 10:30 Entanglement and topological Interfaces

In the talk the basic concepts of conformal field theories, defects and entanglement entropy (EE) will be highlighted. As an application the EE across a defect will be presented with applications on several systems.

Speaker: Daniel Jaud (LMU)

Slides Jaud.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 11:30 Recent Top-Higgs from the Large Hadron Collider

Since the start of the LHC physics programme in 2010, an unprecedented number of top-quark and Higgs boson events have been recorded and analysed. This allows to test the properties of both particles to very high precision. The latest results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments will be presented, with a focus on the top-Higgs Yukawa-coupling. The measurement of this coupling is very challenging due to low production rates and large irreducible backgrounds and constitutes a highly important test of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Speaker: Andrea Knue (MPP)

Slides Knue.pdf

11:30 → 12:00 The oldest stars in the inner Bulge of the Milky Way

Observations of the central part of our Galaxy are challenging due to combination of line of sight effects, strong and variable extinction and a vast area on the sky. The ESO Public Survey VISTA Variables in Via Lactea (VVV) has imaged the Milky Way bulge repeatedly in near-infrared bands, while the GIRAFFE Inner Bulge Survey (GIBS) probed the chemical abundances and kinematics of about 5000 K giant stars spectroscopically. The helium core burning red clump stars and RR Lyrae variables are used to trace the structure and kinematics of the old stellar populations in the inner Bulge. In this talk I will give an overview of recent results from these two large observational programmes that are surveying the inner Milky Way Bulge.

Speaker: Marina Rejkuba (ESO)

Slides Rejkuba.pdf

12:00 → 13:30 Lunch (end 13:30!)

13:30 → 14:30 Highlight talk: Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves

Gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by catastrophic astrophysical events, are arguably the most elusive prediction of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, so feeble that Einstein himself thought their detection was impossible. One hundred years later, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has observed gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes. This groundbreaking discovery marks the opening of a new window on the Universe and a new era of gravitational wave astrophysics, where gravitational waves will provide new insights into black holes and neutron stars, and maybe even reveal new objects. In this talk, Laura Cadonati will present results from the first observing run of Advanced LIGO and discuss the implications for a new gravitational wave astronomy.

Speaker: Laura Cadonati (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Slides Cadonati.pdf

14:30 → 18:30 General Assembly

Thursday 8 December

09:00 → 09:45 Overview Research Area C

Speaker: Thomas Kuhr (LMU)

Slides RA-C-Overview.pdf

09:45 → 10:30 Overview Research Area B

Speakers: Dorothee Schaile (LMU), Wolfgang Hollik (MPP)

Slides RA-B-overview.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 11:45 Overview Research Area E

Speaker: Jochen Weller (LMU)

Slides RA-E-overview.pdf

11:45 → 12:30 Overview Research Area A

Speaker: Ilka Brunner (LMU)

Slides RA-A-overview.pdf

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:45 Overview Research Area I

Speaker: Alexey Krukau (LRZ)

Slides RA-I-overview.pdf

14:45 → 15:30 Overview Research Area D

Speaker: Laura Fabbietti (TUM)

Slides RA-D_overview.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 Coffee

16:00 → 16:45 Perspectives for Research Area G Science

Speakers: Bruno Leibundgut (ESO), Roland Diehl (MPE)

Slides RA-G-oveview+future.pdf

16:45 → 17:30 Overview Research Area F

Speaker: Barbara Ercolano (LMU)

Slides RA-F-overview.pdf

17:30 → 18:00 Brightest Cluster Galaxies with the Wendelstein Wide Field Imager

Deep imaging of local galaxy clusters has revealed a faint and extended intracluster light (ICL) component. It is emitted from stars whose spatial distribution is centered around the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Those stars are not associated to any galaxy, instead, they are free-floating in the whole cluster potential. Our new observations with the Wide Field Imager on the 2m Fraunhofer telescope at Mt. Wendelstein provide unprecedentedly deep photometry of a large sample of z<0.08 galaxy clusters. They enable us to measure the low surface brightness of the ICL with a precision of about 10^-4 compared to the night-sky brightness while still resolving the inner core of the BCGs. The observations will help in improving our understanding of the dynamic processes involved in the formation of BCGs and ICL.

Speaker: Matthias Kluge (LMU)

Slides Kluge.pdf