Talk title:
How much does dark matter control galaxy formation?

Abstract:
We know that the formation of halos and galaxies are correlated— more massive galaxies grow in more massive halos. But how far does this correlation go? Do the minor attributes of a halo—it’s spin, it’s density profile, it’s accretion rate—tell us how the galaxy inside will form and what it will look like? I will show recent analyses of spectroscopic data from SDSS combined with deeper imaging surveys that indirectly probes the link between galaxies and dark halos. Our results will determine which galaxy properties are correlated with halo formation history, and which are not.