Professional info​

Education​

Ph.D. in Astrophysics

Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo

Advised by Prof Eduardo S. Cypriano

​Nov/2011 - Oct/2016

According to the hierarchical scenario, the galaxy clusters are the largest bounded structures today in the Universe. Their formation is through the merger of smaller subclusters mainly along with the filamentary structure on which the matter is distributed on such large scales. The merging of galaxy clusters are the most energetic event since the Big Bang and provide us with an excellent astrophysical laboratory to investigate its three main components:  the dark matter, the intra-cluster gas and the galaxies. In my PhD thesis, we have investigated three systems whose merger is taken place not so far from the plane of the sky: Abell 1758, Abell 2034 e Abell 3376. Our studies were carried out using optical data, both imaging and spectroscopy. With such data, we have reconstructed the mass distribution through the weak lensing technique and obtained dynamical parameters as velocity dispersion and line-of-sight separation. As a result, we have measured the individual masses which was combined with the redshift information in order to characterize the current state of the merger systems. These observational constraints were used as input to the two-body dynamical model in order to describe the merger history of the systems. Moreover, we measured the merger dynamical effect on the velocity dispersion of the member galaxies, comparing the values before and after the event. With our analysis, we have placed upper limits, although weak, on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section.

Master in Astrophysics

Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo

Advised by Prof Eduardo S. Cypriano

​Mar/2009 - Sep/2011

Here we study two galaxy clusters with several observational shreds of evidence that point out to a recent collision event between their sub-structures: Abell A1758 (z = 0.28) and Abell A2034 (z = 0.11). Our goal was to rebuild the mass distributions, which is dominated by the dark matter, aiming to compare them to the two other cluster components: galaxies and the intra-cluster medium. At the stage of the project, we focused on the data reduction, calibration and photometric analysis of the multi-band (B, R e z′) wide-field Subaru imaging. The mass reconstruction was performed by using weak-gravitational lensing. We show here a qualitative comparison of the mass distribution with that of the gas, mapped through its X-ray emission and the member galaxy density distribution. Our results indicated that, within the resolution of our mass maps, that the gaseous and dark components are spatially offset from each other. This is more pronounced in the case of the northern structure in A2034, which shows the largest apparent offset. The cluster A1758 is multi-modal in mass and its northern substructure also shows offsets between the X-ray and mass peaks. In both cases, our data indicate that those are interacting systems in a similar fashion than the notorious bullet cluster.

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Bachelor in Physics

Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo

Feb/2002 - Aug/2008