Astrophysics Seminars

Describing the large-scale behavior of weakly collisional magnetized plasmas, such as the solar wind, hot accretion flows, or the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters, necessitates a detailed understanding of the kinetic-scale physics governing...

I will review the recent "ultra-bright" GRB 130427A data and the puzzles (as well as non-puzzles) raised by its intepretation both in terms of the standard model and in terms of previous plausible extensions of this model. I then discuss the...

I will describe recent work on the observable signatures of compact object birth in two situations. The first scenario is the coalescence of binary neutron stars, the primary source for the direct detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO....

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) has mapped the microwave sky to arcminute scales. Efficient map-making and spectrum-estimation techniques allow us to probe the acoustic peaks deep into the damping tail, and allow for confirmation of the...

ABSTRACT: Clusters of Galaxies are the largest gravitationally-bound objects in the Universe. They form via mergers with energetics that are only rivaled by the Big Bang. The study of these objects and collisions can reveal the complex processes...

ABSTRACT: Large scale magnetic fields are found everywhere in the universe, from the scales of planets to galactic disks (or larger). Understanding their generation and maintenance has proven to be unexpectedly difficult. I will discuss topological...

The properties of the Supernovae discovered in coincidence with long-duration Gamma-ray Bursts will be reviewed, and compared to those of Supernovae for which GRBs are not observed. The SNe associated with GRBs are of Type Ic. They are brighter than...

ABSTRACT: Echelle observations can be used as an independent means of probing the dust extinction of SNe Ia. I show that the extinction of the objects where the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Angstroms is detected is consistent with the visual...