Kristine Spekkens (Queen’s University in Canada)

Abstract: The atomic gas (HI) content of nearby galaxies provides important insight into how they form and evolve within the standard cosmology. In this talk, I will highlight some of my group’s recent progress towards building statistical samples of gas-rich galaxies to use as cosmological probes. I will first focus on how sensitive HI searches in optically-selected dwarf and ultra-diffuse galaxy candidates are a powerful tool for measuring their structure and constraining formation models. I will then describe how the widefield WALLABY survey, now underway on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), is delivering the first spatially-resolved populations of HI disks for comparison with cosmological predictions. This work paves the way for probing HI disks across cosmic time using the SKA when it comes online towards the end of this decade.