Astrophysics Seminars

Fast inward migration of planetary cores embedded in gaseous disks is a common problem in the current planet formation paradigm. Even though dust is ubiquitous in protoplanetary disks, its dynamical role in the migration history of planetary embryos...

Driven by gravity, galaxies continuously grow through accretion of smaller systems. Stellar streams are nice illustrations of this hierarchical build-up, but the accreted stars quickly disperse. I will present advanced dynamical models that can...

Data from ESA’s Gaia mission is already revolutionizing Galactic astronomy, providing an unprecedented view of the Solar neighborhood and beyond. However, while it provides us a great opportunity to transform our understanding of the Milky Way, it...

Weak gravitational lensing imprints a coherent distortion onto the observed shapes of distant galaxies. At the image level, this gravitational shear is degenerate with the intrinsic shape of galaxies, and the weak lensing signal-to-noise from an...

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide an exciting opportunity to study supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in quiescent galaxies and the stellar populations and dynamics in galactic nuclei. They test the limits of black hole accretion by regularly...

I will explore the "Elusive Universe," where dark matter, neutrinos, and gravity sculpt our observed nature, leaving many open questions.
My work focuses on opening up new directions to answer these puzzles. I will present two approaches:
1) Using...

Centers of galaxies are fertile environments for a variety of dynamical processes, owing to the high density of stars and the presence of a central supermassive black hole. Stars may occasionally be deflected onto a deadly trajectory, passing too...

When a globular cluster or a dwarf galaxy is tidally disrupted due to its host galactic potential, the unbound stars assemble into coherent filamentary structures known as stellar streams. Given the ordered nature of their dynamical formation...

Astrophysical black holes are surrounded by accretion disks, jets, and coronae consisting of magnetized, (near)-collisionless relativistic plasma. They produce observable high-energy radiation and it is currently unclear where and how this emission...