Astrophysics Seminars

Pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments aim to detect nHz-frequency gravitational waves using high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. Multiple PTA collaborations have recently reported evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background...

The common observation that Jupiter's Galilean moons resemble a miniature Solar System has long been seen as evidence that young giant planets are surrounded by circumplanetary disks of gas and dust. Recently, one circumplanetary disk - around the...

A large fraction of exoplanetary systems contain planets that orbit very close to their host stars. With orbital periods in the range of days to weeks, tidal forces become important and lead to significant orbital and physical effects on the planets...

The search for signs of life beyond Earth is a key motivator in exoplanet research.  A suitable “biosignature gas” is one that: can accumulate in an atmosphere against atmospheric radicals and other sinks; has strong atmospheric spectral features...

Galaxies are at the core of nearly all modern astrophysical studies. They serve as essential cosmological probes, tracing the structure of the universe, while also providing the stage on which stars form and black holes grow. Despite their...

From the collapse of molecular clouds into stars to spectacular galactic mergers, binary systems form on many scales across the universe. Interactions between binaries and their environments can sculpt the stellar populations we observe today, alter...

Superradiant instabilities may create clouds of ultralight bosons around rotating black holes, forming so-called "gravitational atoms". In this talk, I will review a series of papers that study the effects of a binary companion’s presence. The...

I’ll discuss an old technique called intensity interferometry, pioneered by Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) that allows us to achieve sub-microarcsecond angular resolution using ordinary ground-based optical telescopes observing visible light.  This...