Eric Miller

Title: Understanding Group Evolution

Abstract: Galaxy groups are vital to our understanding of structure formation, cluster evolution, and galaxy evolution, yet they are difficult to study at even moderate redshift. In this talk I will discuss a project to observe an X-ray flux-limited sample of intermediate-redshift groups identified by the XBootes snapshot Chandra survey. The survey region is fully covered by deep optical imaging and spectroscopy, yielding redshifts for 20,000 galaxies and allowing construction of an independent sample of optically-selected groups. The primary goals of this project are to understand the physical connection between the X-ray and optical properties of groups, and to probe the evolution of group X-ray emission to constrain non-gravitational physics in the hot intragroup medium.