Lea Giordano, PhD student

Education:
2007 M.S. in Physics, University of Milano-Bicocca

Research History:
2006-2007 undergraduate fellow, Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Milano
2007-present PhD student, ITP Zuerich

Past and Present Projects:

Master Thesis on "Globular Cluster Systems of Elliptical Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster". Supervisors: Monica Colpi, Giuseppe Gavazzi.
Triggered by the discovery of an anisotropy in the distribution of the globular clusters of the early-type galaxy NGC4261, we used the HST-ACS Virgo Survey data to carry on an accurate analysis of the globular cluster systems of a sample of early-type galaxies belonging to Virgo Cluster.

Undergraduate fellowship at Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera on "Galaxy evolution, role of environment and AGN feedback": april 2006 - may 2007.
Supervisors: Anna Wolter, Ginevra Trinchieri.

  1. The early-type galaxy NGC4261 reveals asymmetric distributions of X-ray sources as seen with Chandra, and globular clusters (GC) as seen with HST (Giordano et al., 2005). To investigate the possibility that this effect is due to the galaxy's merger history, we carried the analysis of its X-ray diffuse emission with Chandra and XMM data, constraining competing models for the AGN, and providing information on the unique two-sided X-ray and radio jet.
  2. We have identified a distant cluster from a modified red sequence method and followed it up spectroscopically. My main role in this work was to reduce and analyze the X-ray data from XMM LSS survey. We find that the HON for this cluster is only marginally consistent with what expected assuming a self-similar evolution of clusters scaling relations, suggesting perhaps a breaking of them at z~1. We also rule out a strong galaxy merging activity between z=1 and today (Andreon et al., 2007).

Most recently, I'm working on a multiwavelenght study of the ring galaxy AM 0644-741, from the X-ray (Chandra), through the UV (Galex) and optical (HST), to the far-infrared (Spitzer) bands (Giordano et al., in preparation). The morphology of AM 0644-741 and of its companions appears strongly perturbed by the interactions. This study could allow to understand how disc galaxies collisionally evolve into rings (Mapelli et al, 2007).

PhD project: Supervisors: Kim-Vy tran, Ben Moore

  1. Fraction of barred galaxies in different environments. From the simulations is expected that almost every single spiral galaxy in clusters should be barred. Using optical, near-infrared and radio data we try to evaluate the fraction of barred galaxies in different type of environments and to compare the result with the simulations run by the ITP group.

Publications