Research Interests

Jiangtao Li is looking at the circum-galactic medium (CGM) around local galaxies in order to understand its role in galaxy formation and evolution. He is primarily working on the multi-phase (cold, hot, and warm) gases of the CGM , which carry most of the chemical and mechanical feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) and supernovae and provide fresh fuels to continue star formation in the galaxies. Li uses multi-wavelength observations to study the multi-phase CGM around local galaxies, including Chandra/XMM-Newton/Suzaku observations to study the hot X-ray emitting gas and UV/optical absorption lines to study the warm CGM. He also collaborates with others on HI and CO observations of the cold gas, as well as radio continuum observations tracing the emission produced by cosmic rays in the galactic scale magnetic field. These multi-wavelength observations will greatly advance our understanding of the faintest part of the baryonic universe and help us to solve puzzles of the formation and evolution of galaxies, such as the missing baryon problem.

Figure: Hot X-ray emitting galactic coronae of some local spiral or S0 galaxies (Li, Jiang-Tao & Wang Q. Daniel, 2013a, MNRAS, 428, 2085).

Jiangtao Li is also working on the multi-wavelength observations of supernova remnants (SNRs), which result from the explosion of supernovae (SNe) and are one of the major factories producing relativistic particles (cosmic rays; CRs) in the local universe. He has developed tools to conduct spatially-resolved spectroscopy analysis, which helps us to map out the physical parameters of the SNRs. These analyses will greatly advance our study of the hydrodynamical evolution of SNRs, in a way of characterizing the spatial distribution of the properties of thermal and non-thermal emissions of young SNRs, such as the temperature, ionization state, and metallicity of the thermal plasma, and the amount and energy distribution of the accelerated particles producing the non-thermal emission.

Figure: XMM-Newton tri-color X-ray images of SNR SN1006 (Li Jiang-Tao, et al., 2015b, MNRAS, 453, 3953).