2021-22

Speakers: Karin Oberg (Harvard), "Organic Chemistry in Protoplanetary Disks" Eric Koch (SMA Fellow), "Detailed neutral ISM kinematics in the Local Group galaxies and the need for synthetic observations" Evan Bauer (CfA Fellow), “Mass Estimates for...

"The far ultra-violet background" The diffuse far-ultraviolet (FUV) background has received considerable attention from astronomers since the seventies. The initial impetus came from the hope of detecting UV radiation from the hot intergalactic medium...

"Testing the equivalence principle in the dark sector" The equivalence between the inertial and gravitational mass is built-in the formulation of General Relativity as the curvature of space time. In the visible sector, the equivalence principle has been...

"Stellar Basins of Gravitationally Bound Particles" I will describe the phenomenology of stellar basins: volumetric stellar emission into gravitationally bound orbits of weakly coupled particles such as axions, moduli, hidden photons, and fermions. While...

"From Kiloparsec Scales to a Merger: Properties of Dual AGNs that Become Gravitational Wave Sources" Observational searches for dual active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at kiloparsec separations are crucial for understanding the role of galaxy mergers in the...

"The DESI Survey and Galaxy Evolution: Lyman Alpha Emitters and the Andromeda Galaxy" Abstract: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument has begun its 5-year mission to explore the universe both near and far and map out its expansion history. In addition...

"Tracing out the darkness with cold gas: dynamically probing galaxy evolution" In this talk I will describe how mapping the dynamics of gas clouds in the centre of galaxies can help us to constrain a wide range of astrophysical problems. From the...

“Dwarf galaxy stellar haloes” The hierarchical nature of structure formation predicts that haloes grow by the aggregation of several lower-mass "clumps". A natural consequence of this process is the existence of an extended halo of stars surrounding...

"AI for Gravitational Waves and Dense Matter" The groundbreaking discoveries of gravitational waves from binary black-hole mergers and, more recently, coalescing neutron stars started a new era of Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics and revolutionized our...

"Cosmic Probes of the Dark Sector" Abstract: In this talk, I will describe my efforts to understand the nature of the mysterious dark matter. I will give some insight into how I am using a range of tools -- model building, computation, and neutron stars -...