Research Interests

Determining the accretion history of the Milky Way Halo via stellar chemical abundance ratio distributions (CARDs​)

Two of the most fundamental questions in Galactic archeology are: what is the accretion history of the Galaxy, and what are the physical similarities and differences between surviving satellites and Galactic stellar halo progenitors? To address these questions one can look at the chemical composition of stellar populations residing in the halo versus those found in dwarf galaxies. Since stars retain a signature of their galactic origin in their chemical compositions, one can exploit the chemical abundance ratio distributions (CARDs) observed in stellar systems to put constraints on the nature and history of their progenitors. 

One core aim of my research is to develop CARD-tracking semi-analytic models (SAM) to address these questions by combining two interrelated approaches: determining how CARDs are affected by galactic processes and developing statistical analysis for CARDs that identifies the nature of their underlying galactic system(s). 

See here for details.

Duane M. Lee