Astrophysics

Abstract: I will review the state of the field of gravitational wave astrophysics, framing the challenges, current observations, and future prospects within the context of the predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Accretion is a ubiquitous process is the universe, shaping objects from planets to supermassive black holes. For accreters which posses a material surface, the accretion flow rapidly change configurations from a rotationally supported disk to the...

Finding low-scatter relationships in properties of complex systems (e.g., stars, supernovae, galaxies) is important to gain physical insights into them and/or to estimate their distances/masses. As the size of simulation/observational datasets grow...

Understanding the physics of living systems allows us to design new materials that are active and adaptive, akin to cells and tissues. Conversely, these active matter systems can reveal fundamental principles in physics and biology. In this talk, I...

Among a handful of mysteries in the LambdaCDM paradigm of cosmology, I focus on three: Dark Matter, Baryogenesis and the origin of structure. I then provide a pedagogical introduction to Chiral Gravity and show how these three mysteries may be...

With upcoming arcminute resolution multi-frequency CMB maps and full-sky galaxy surveys, observables based on the Sunyaev Zeldovich (SZ) effect will constitute a promising avenue for reshaping our understanding of galaxy formation and constraining...

Abstract: One can paraphrase Penrose’s strong cosmic censorship conjecture as stating that general relativity is generically a deterministic theory. While the full conjecture remains wide open there has long been evidence pointing towards its...

The Kepler Mission has revolutionized exoplanet science, with over 2000 confirmed planets to date. However, most exoplanet host stars observed by Kepler are too faint to perform extensive radial-velocity follow-up to precisely measure Doppler semi...

X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies, consisting primarily of emission from accreting black holes and neutron stars (i.e., X-ray binaries) and the hot interstellar medium, is a key tracer of processes like the physics of accretion onto compact...