Astrophysics Seminars

As established by ground based surveys, white dwarfs with hydrogen atmospheres pulsate as they cool across the temperature range, 12,500 K Teff 10,800 K. Known as DAVs or ZZ Ceti stars, their oscillations are attributed to overstable g-modes...

The interactions between forming stars and their environment shapes the natal cloud evolution, the efficiency at which stars form and the stellar initial mass function. Commonly, signatures of stellar feedback are identified “by eye.” However, this...

Atmospheric escape or mass loss is an important process in the evolution of planetary atmospheres in the Solar System, as well as in extrasolar planets. However, there are many aspects of atmospheric escape in exoplanets that remain poorly...

I will present recent results on how binary black holes (BBHs) merge in dense stellar systems through chaotic few-body interactions. From taking into account GR effects in the equation-of-motion, I will show that dense stellar systems are likely to...

Gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters has become an important tool in studying galaxies from the first billion years of cosmic time; the clusters act as "cosmic telescopes" and make distant galaxies easier to detect. This unique capability has...

The star formation process occurs in star clusters and stellar associations, following the collapse of the giant molecular cloud. As a byproduct, planets form in protoplanetary disk within 10 Myr after the star formation process. Before the...

Thin fluid disks, found in a variety of astrophysical environments, can in general become eccentric, often as a result of interactions with orbital companions. I will discuss the dynamics of eccentric disks, focusing on their occurrence in two...

Over the past decade, observations have revealed AGN feedback in action in the form of energetic, wide-angle, galaxy-scale outflows powered by luminous quasars. These outflows are observed at essentially all wavelengths, ranging from the radio to...

The epoch of cosmic reionization is arguably the least observed epoch of cosmic history. However, the upcoming 21 cm radio interferometers and the next generation optical telescopes are on their way to shed light on the state of the IGM and the...