Astrophysics Seminars

It is becoming an observational reality to catch common envelope episodes and stellar mergers in action as astronomical transients. We think that most compact binaries pass through these phases, where one star becomes engulfed by the envelope of its...

Galaxy mergers have long been implicated as drivers of supermassive black hole (BH) and galaxy co-evolution, but the relative importance of mergers for fueling active galactic nuclei (AGN) is still uncertain. In large part, the ongoing debate stems...

Although quasar activity is believed to be associated with galaxy mergers, at least one of the progenitor galaxies must host a pre-existing massive black hole (MBH). Furthermore, mergers make spheroids, yet there are galaxies lacking classical...

TITLE & ABSTRACT ADDED - Kuiper Belt Objects are often touted as fossil records of the early Solar System. So what can we learn from them? Here I will discuss one important aspect, their primordial size distribution: is it top-heavy with most of the...

The standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model is successful at describing the distribution of matter at large scales but faces problems at galactic scales. Pundits blame for this the poorly understood or modeled baryonic physics, e.g., star formation...

We are planning to run a large program of cosmological large-scale structure surveys over the next decade. By probing more modes than the CMB, we hope to learn new aspects about dark energy, the origin of the universe or neutrinos. However, many of...

I will give a tour through a variety of results on how precision cosmological data can test for the consequences of a light scalar in the early universe, such as an axion or a curvaton. Observable consequences could include altered CMB peak...