Astrophysics

Dynamical Chern-Simons gravity (dCS) is a four-dimensional parity-violating extension of general relativity. Current models predict the effect of this extension to be negligible due to large decay constants f close to the scale of grand unified...

Abstract: Pure 3d gravity in AdS has only boundary degrees of freedom. I will show that these interact nontrivially if spacetime is restricted to a finite size. Their dynamics can be obtained equivalently by TTbar deforming the infinite volume...

High energy stellar irradiation is believed to control atmospheric chemistry in and mass loss of short-period planets. These effects are intensified in the earliest stages of planetary evolution because young stars are more active and produce...

Each week, we hold a relatively informal seminar/discussion series with an emphasis on extra-galactic and large-scale structure astrophysics.

During Galread a leader/visitor presents a recent paper to the discussion group. The PDF of the paper is...

Type Ia supernovae involve the thermonuclear detonation of white dwarf stars, and are an essential tool allowing us to study the Universe on vast scales. However, Type Ia supernovae are not the only byproducts of the mergers at the endpoints of...

Large-area surveys such as Gaia have given us an unprecedented amount of data on stars in the Milky Way. One of the largest ongoing challenges in understanding the present-day structure and formation history of our Galaxy (i.e. Galactic archaeology)...

The Bahcall Lunch follow the astrophysics colloquium lecture. Registration is required by 3pm the previous Friday so a meal can be provided. Please contact Amanda Cenker with questions.

After decades of preparation, the era of gravitational wave astronomy has begun. The gravitational wave detectors, LIGO and Virgo, have published a catalog of 90 events of coalescing compact objects including black holes and neutron stars. I will...

Abstract: In holographic duality an eternal AdS black hole is described by two copies of the boundary CFT in the thermal field double state. We provide explicit constructions in the boundary theory of infalling time evolutions which can take bulk...

Astronomical observations indicate that coherent, dynamically important magnetic fields are ubiquitous in the Universe. However, neither the origin problem -- what are the physical mechanisms that generate the initial ``seed'' magnetic fields —- nor...