# Princeton University

### Measuring and Modelling Redshift-space Distortions in the Galaxy Distribution

John Peacock

Deviations from a uniformly expanding universe are of interest in modern cosmology, most particularly because the amplitude of such peculiar motions measures the strength of gravity on scales of roughly 10-100 Mpc. I will review various recent...

### Microlensing Takes Off: Toward the Galactic Distribution of Planets

After 50 years of dreaming about it, space-based microlensing observations are now underway. A 2014 100-hr Spitzer Pilot Program generated "microlens parallaxes" for dozens of lenses, opening the prospect of measuring the Galactic distribution of...

### Turbulence in Planet Formation

Phil Armitage

A combination of sub-mm observations and numerical simulations have the potential to yield direct constraints on the environment of planet formation. After a review of recent observational surprises, I will discuss the implications of our first...

### A Decade of Asteroseismology in Action

Conny Aerts

After a basic introduction on how asteroseismology works in practice, we illustrate its application to various kinds of stars of different mass and evolutionary stage. We show how detected oscillation modes allow us to understand details of the...

### Signposts of Planetary Systems Around Evolved Stars

Recent Spitzer observations have revealed presence of near-IR excesses in spectra of more than thirty white dwarfs with atmospheres enriched in metals. These excesses are naturally interpreted as reprocessing of the stellar emission by compact...

### Incorporating Post-Newtonian Effects in N-body Dynamics

Clifford Will

The increasing role of general relativity in the dynamics of stellar systems with central massive black holes, in the generation of extreme mass-ratio inspirals, and in the evolution of hierarchical triple systems inspires a close examination of how...

### Dark Matter Dynamics

Tom Abel

http://www.ias.edu/sns/~seminar/colloquia.shtml

### Level raising mod 2 and arbitrary 2-Selmer ranks

We prove a level raising mod $p = 2$ theorem for elliptic curves over $\mathbb Q$, generalizing theorems of Ribet and Diamond-Taylor. As an application, we show that the 2-Selmer rank can be arbitrary in level raising families. We will begin by...

### Herschel Studies of Extrasolar Kuiper Belt-like Systems

Amaya-Moro Martin

Planetesimals are the building blocks of planets. They can be traced by the dust they produce in collisions or sublimation that forms a debris disk. In the solar system, such a dust disk is produced by the asteroids, comets and Kuiper Belt objects...

### Tracking Planet Footprints in Dusty Disks

Catherine Espaillat

We know that most stars, if not all, were once surrounded by protoplanetary disks. How these young disks evolve into planetary systems is a fundamental question in astronomy. Observations of T Tauri stars (TTS) may provide insights into this...