Interacting Dwarf Galaxies
Dwarf galaxies differ from their more massive counterparts, as their dark matter to baryonic matter fraction tends to be larger, they are much fainter than Milky Way type galaxies, and they are inefficient at forming stars from their large gas reservoirs. Dwarf galaxies dominate the galaxy population of the Universe at all times, and interactions and mergers between them occur more frequently in a given volume than for massive galaxies. They play a crucial role in the hierarchical build up of dark matter and stellar halos. To investigate this population of galaxies, and better understand how galaxies build up their mass in the early Universe, Pearson has been involved in several observational (Pearson et al. 2016, Privon, Pearson+ 2017, Luber, Pearson+ 2022) and theoretical (Pearson et al. 2018, Besla, Pearson+ 2018, Chamberlain, Pearson+ 2023) studies on the nature of collisions between dwarf galaxies.
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