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Creators/Authors contains: "Vasan_G_C, Keerthi"

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  1. The kinematics of star-forming galaxy populations at high redshifts are integral to our understanding of disk properties, merger rates, and other defining characteristics. Nebular gas emission is a common tracer of galaxies’ gravitational potential and angular momenta, but is sensitive to nongravitational forces as well as galactic outflows, and thus might not accurately trace the host galaxy dynamics. We present kinematic maps of young stars from rest-ultraviolet photospheric absorption in the star-forming galaxy CASSOWARY 13 (a.k.a. SDSS J1237+5533) atz= 1.87 using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager, alongside nebular emission measurements from the same observations. Gravitational lensing magnification of the galaxy enables good spatial sampling of multiple independent lensed images. We find close agreement between the stellar and nebular velocity fields. We measure a mean local velocity dispersion ofσ = 64 ± 12 km s−1for the young stars, consistent with that of the Hiiregions traced by nebular Ciii] emission (52  ±  9 km s−1). The ∼20 km s−1average difference in line-of-sight velocity is much smaller than the local velocity width and the velocity gradient (≳100 km s−1). We find no evidence of asymmetric drift nor evidence that outflows bias the nebular kinematics, and thus we conclude that nebular emission appears to be a reasonable dynamical tracer of young stars in the galaxy. These results support the picture of star formation in thick disks with high velocity dispersion atz ∼ 2, and they represent an important step toward establishing robust kinematics of early galaxies using collisionless tracers. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available September 17, 2026
  2. Strong gravitational lenses with two background sources at widely separated redshifts are a promising independent probe of cosmological parameters. We can use these systems, known as double-source-plane lenses (DSPLs), to measure the ratio (β) of angular-diameter distances of the sources, which is sensitive to the matter density (Ωm) and the equation-of-state parameter for dark-energy (w). However, DSPLs are rare and require high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy for detection, lens modeling, and measuringβ. Here, we report only the second DSPL ever used to measure cosmological parameters. We model the DSPLAGEL150745+052256 from the ASTRO 3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses (AGEL) survey using Hubble Space Telescope/Wide-Field Camera 3 imaging and Keck Cosmic Web Imager spectroscopy. The spectroscopic redshifts for the deflector and two sources inAGEL1507 arezdefl= 0.594,zS1 =  2.163, andzS2= 2.591. We measure a stellar velocity dispersion ofσobs = 109 ± 27 km s−1for the nearer source (S1). Usingσobsfor the main deflector (from literature) and S1, we test the robustness of our DSPL model. We measure β = 0.95 3 0.010 + 0.008 forAGEL1507 and infer Ωm = 0.3 3 0.23 + 0.38 for ΛCDM cosmology. CombiningAGEL1507 with the published model of the Jackpot lens improves the precision on Ωm(ΛCDM) andw(wCDM) by ∼10%. The inclusion of DSPLs significantly improves the constraints when combined with Planck’s cosmic microwave background observations, enhancing the precision onwby 30%. This paper demonstrates the potential constraining power of DSPLs and their complementarity to other standard cosmological probes. Tighter future constraints from larger DSPL samples discovered from ongoing and forthcoming large-area sky surveys would provide insights into the nature of dark energy. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available September 16, 2026