Chakrabarti’s study on these overlapping regions found in spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, is funded by a three-year $325,053 grant from the National Science Foundation. Her research seeks to solve an astrophysical conundrum dubbed “the missing satellites problem,” in which theoretical simulations that predict an abundance of satellite galaxies are unsupported by observational data.
Earlier this year, Chakrabarti, assistant professor of physics in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy, validated her prediction of a previously unseen satellite galaxy located close to the plane of the Milky Way. In her new study, Chakrabarti and Andy Lipnicky, a Ph.D. student in RIT’s astrophysical sciences and technology program, will create the first “mock” map and catalogue of satellite populations from analysing extended atomic hydrogen discs.
“We will produce models that are consistent with both the atomic hydrogen and stellar data of our galaxy, which displays large ripples in the outskirts, a prominent warp and vertical waves in the galactic disc,” Chakrabarti said.
Chakrabarti’s goal of gaining an understanding of the distribution of dark matter combines her method with gravitational lensing. She will analyse the ripples in the atomic hydrogen map and results from gravitational lensing — a technique that uses the bending of light to weigh distant galaxies and reconstruct the dark-matter background.
“Comparing and contrasting results from both methods might improve the statistics of detecting dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies,” Chakrabarti said.