Amalia K. Hicks, Ph.D.

•  Email: ahicks@alum.mit.edu
   Phone: (434) 924-4897
   Fax: (434) 924-3104
   Office: 237 Astronomy Building

  Hubble Image of The Lensing Cluster RCS0224-0002 at z=0.773

  HST image of the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) discovered galaxy cluster RCS0224-0002. This cluster has been spectroscopically confirmed at a redshift of z=0.773. The outer gravitational lensing arc originates from a galaxy at a redshift of z=4.87 (Gladders, Yee & Ellingson 2002), with others expected to fall within the range 1.8 < z < 3.6. A detailed X-ray analysis of the 90 ks Chandra observation of this cluster has recently been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

  
   Address:

        Department of Astronomy
        University of Virginia
        PO Box 400325
        530 McCormick Road
        Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325

Research interests:

• Clusters of Galaxies
• X-ray Astronomy
• The High-Redshift Universe
• Optical vs. X-Ray Cluster Selection
• Cooling Flows, Radio Bubbles, and Star Formation
• AGN in Clusters
• Large Scale Structure Formation

Curriculum Vitae:

• BA, English Literature, Macalester College, 1994.
• BS, Physics, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 1997.
• M.S., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2001.
• Ph.D., Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences University of Colorado - Boulder, 2005.
  

  X-ray Point Sources in the Field of RCS 0224-0002

  Hard (2.0-10.0 keV) X-ray point source regions are overlayed on an adaptively smoothed Chandra flux image of the high redshift cluster RCS0224-0002. The large circle denotes a radius of R200 (1.14 Mpc). Within that region, six of the hard X-ray point sources are coincident with radio emission. AGN activity peaks at ~0.7 R200 and may inject enough energy into the intracluster medium (ICM) to significantly raise its entropy (Hicks et al. 2007).

  
  Presently:
• Postdoctoral Research Scientist for C. L. Sarazin, University of Virginia
  
  More Information:
• Complete CV as a PDF file.
  • Last Modified: Sunday, 18-Nov-2007 12:11:55 EST
  • File Size:174K
  
  
• Complete Publication List as a PDF file.
  • Last Modified:Sunday, 18-Nov-2007 12:12:07 EST
  • File Size: 94K

Selected Preprints and Recent Papers:

Chandra X-ray Observations of the 0.6 < z < 1.1 Red-Sequence Cluster Survey Sample,, Hicks, A. K., Ellingson, E., Bautz, M., Cain, B., Garmire, G., Gilbank, D., Gladders, M., Hoekstra, H., & Yee, H. K. C. 2007, ApJ, accepted astro-ph/0710.5513

• PDF file
  • File Size:2.6M

A Multiwavelength Analysis of the Strong Lensing Cluster RCS022434-0002.5 at z=0.778 , Hicks, A. K., Ellingson, E., Hoekstra, H., Gladders, M., Yee, H. K. C., Bautz, M., Gilbank, D., & Webb, T. 2007, ApJ, 671, 1446

• PDF file
  • File Size:4.0M

Chandra Observation of the Interaction of the Radio Source and Cooling Core in Abell 2063, Kanov, K., Sarazin, C. & Hicks, A. K. 2006, ApJ, 653, 184

• PDF file
  • File Size:465K

Multiwavelength Mass Comparisons of the z~0.3 CNOC Cluster Sample, Hicks, A. K., Ellingson, E., Hoekstra, H. & Yee, H. K. C. 2006, ApJ, 652, 232

• PDF file
  • File Size:1.0M

Star Formation Rates in Cooling Flow Clusters: A UV Pilot Study with Archival XMM Newton Optical Monitor Data, Hicks, A. K., & Mushotzky, R. 2005, ApJL, 635, L9

Evidence of Recent Star Formation in Cooling Flow Clusters

UV/IR luminosity ratio vs. 2MASS J band luminosity. All luminosities were calculated in 7 arcsec radius regions, and corrected for galactic extinction. Diamonds indicate cooling flow cluster cDs, all of which are at low redshift (z < 0.1) except for the three points farthest to the right, which have redshifts of ˜ 0.25. The line designates the best fitting relationship between UV and IR luminosity for passively evolving and non-cooling flow cD galaxies. The high UV/IR ratio of the cooling flow clusters is a strong indication of the existence of hot young stars and thus a direct indication of copious recent star formation (Hicks & Mushotzky 2005).

• Gzip Postscript file
  • File Size:403K

Multiwavelength Studies of Cluster Evolution from z~1 to the Present, Hicks, A. K. 2005, Ph.D. Thesis

• Gzip Postscript file
  • File Size: 24M

Chandra X-ray Observations of Newly Discovered, z~1 Clusters from the Red Sequence Cluster Survey, Hicks, A. K., Ellingson, E., Bautz, M. W., Yee, H. K. C., Gladders, M., & Garmire, G. 2005, Advances in Space Research, 36, 706

• Gzip Postscript file
  • File Size:617K

• BAAS Thesis Talk Abstract

Unresolved X-ray Sources in Intermediate Redshift Cluster Fields, Fawcett, S., Ellingson, E., & Hicks, A. K. 2004, BAAS, 36, 317

• Microsoft PowerPoint file
  • File Size:530K

Additional publications

Teaching/Educational Experience:

Summer 2007:

Instructor of undergraduate course Astronomy 348: Introduction to Cosmology

Spring 2007:

Guest speaker at a public open house at Leander McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia

Fall 2006:

Substitute instructor for graduate course Astronomy 545: High Energy Astrophysics

Fall 2005-Spring 2006:

Participated in the undergraduate Astronomy research project of Kalin Kanov

Fall 2005:

Substitute instructor for Astronomy majors course Astronomy 211: General Astronomy I

Spring/Summer 2005:

Advised the undergraduate Astronomy research project of Nils Alpers

Spring 2003-Spring 2005:

Advised the undergraduate Physics senior honors thesis of Stevi Fawcett
(this involved becoming a certified observer at Apache Point Observatory)

Fall 2003:

Quantum Mechanics instructor for GRE review classes at the University of Colorado

Fall 2001-Fall 2003:

Ran public open houses at Sommers Bausch Observatory at the University of Colorado

Spring 1997:

Recitation instructor for a math-based Physics course taught by John W. Norbury at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

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Last modified January 22, 2008 at 15:29:53 EST by akh5h
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~akh5h/index.html