Astrophysics Research Interests

Faculty

• Professor James Stone: Astrophysical gas dynamics; star and planet formation, accretion flows, interstellar gas dynamics. Numerical algorithms for magneto-hydrodynamics and radiation hydrodynamics
• Professor Matias Zaldarriaga: Cosmology -- early universe cosmology, cosmological perturbation theory, cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure, dark matter and dark energy

Visiting Professor

• Maureen and John Hendricks Visiting Professor Rashid Sunyaev: Theoretical astrophysics, high energy astrophysics and cosmology: including CMB, clusters of galaxies, theory of accretion onto black holes and neutron stars, interaction of matter and radiation under astrophysical conditions, x-ray astronomy

Current Members

• Kazuyuki Akitsu: tidal effects arising from the initial conditions or the gravitational clustering in the cosmological structure formation; extracting cosmological signals hidden in the shape of galaxies.

• Lev Arzamasskiy: Plasma astrophysics, collisionless turbulence, particle heating, plasma instabilities, accretion disks, solar wind, intracluster medium

• Rennan Barkana: cosmic dawn; constructs models and simulations in order to predict the properties of the galaxies in which the first stars and black holes formed, and studies ways to observe them, especially with radio waves from hydrogen at a wavelength of 21 cm.

• Giovanni Cabass: Effective field theory methods in cosmology: inflation and large-scale structure; galaxy bias; non-Gaussianity of primordial gravitational waves

• Sukanya Chakrabarti: Galactic dynamics (dark matter, dwarf galaxies; simulations and observations), time-domain astronomy (lensed supernovae)

• Horng Sheng Chia: Gravitational waves, orbital dynamics, black holes and neutron stars, astroparticle physics, dark matter, physics beyond the Standard Model, cosmology

• Chris Hamilton: dynamics of galaxies, globular clusters, binary stars, and planetary systems; compact object mergers (LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave progenitors); and the kinetic theory of stellar systems and plasmas.

• Hsiang-Chih Hwang: Binary stars, binary quasars, galactic dynamics, galactic archaeology, chemical abundances, white dwarfs

• Mikhail Ivanov: cosmological structure formation; gravitational clustering; black hole physics and the effective field theory of inspiraling binaries.

• Helmer Koppelman: Formation and evolution of the Milky Way, Galactic dynamics, large astronomical surveys (emphasis on Gaia), dark matter, N-body simulations, big data analysis, machine learning

• Lia Medeiros: Black holes, the Galactic center black hole Sgr A*, the Event Horizon Telescope, tests of GR, accretion disks, variability of accreting systems, principal components analysis, simulations

• Elias Most: Gravitational waves, neutron stars, neutron star equation of state, neutron star mergers, electromagnetic precursors, magnetohydrodynamics, numerical relativity, numerical methods for astrophysical fluid dynamics

• Patrick Mullen: astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics; numerical simulations of the planetary scale giant impact thought to have formed Earth's Moon.

• Elena Murchikova: Milky Way's Galactic Centre black hole Sagittarius A*; black hole accretion; accretion disks; ALMA; neutron stars and chiral fluids

• Carolyn Raithel: Neutron stars, the dense-matter equation of state, gravitational waves, neutron star mergers, Bayesian inference, numerical simulations, core-collapse supernovae

• Elizabeth Tolman: Magnetic reconnection, magnetohydrodynamics, kinetic theory, plasma transport, plasmoid instability, pulsars, tokamaks

• Benjamin Wallisch: Cosmology – cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure, neutrinos and other light relics, cosmological signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model, inflation

• Digvijay Wadekar: cosmology, astroparticle physics and machine learning; cosmological inference from galaxy surveys, probing non-standard dark matter using dwarf galaxies, and machine learning to emulate expensive hydrodynamic simulations.

• Joshua Winn: Exoplanet detection and characterization. The geometry of exoplanet systems

• George Wong: high-energy astrophysical phenomena, especially in the context of accretion onto supermassive black holes; connection between black holes and relativistic jets as might be observed by next-generation experiments.

• Siyao Xu: Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, turbulent dynamo, magnetic reconnection, cosmic rays, (first) star formation, high-energy astrophysics, interstellar / intergalactic turbulence

• Barak Zackay: Applications of algorithms, statistics and signal processing in observational astronomy, particularly in searching for optical transients, fast radio bursts, pulsars, gravitational waves and exoplanets; anything that relates to pulsars, fast radio bursts, planets and gravitational waves

• Nadia Zakamska: from extrasolar planets to extragalactic astronomy. Most recently focused on long-standing puzzles in evolution and dynamics of binary stars and on discovery of binaries of compact stellar remnants.