CTC Research

Members of the CTC pursue research in a wide range of areas within theoretical astrophysics. Subject areas of particular emphasis include:

Solar System Astrophysics: orbital dynamics of rings and moons, fundamentals of resonance-driven evolution, mechanics of asteroid and planetesimal collisions, evolution of dust, solar system origins

Galactic Astrophysics: formation of stars and planets, dynamics of the interstellar medium, photodissociation regions, spiral structure, dynamics of barred galaxies, star cluster dynamics

High Energy Astrophysics: radiation from neutron stars and black holes, gravitational radiation, diagnostics of AGN, fundamentals of accretion physics, magnetohydrodynamics of jets and winds, gas physics in galaxy clusters

Cosmology: galaxy formation, intergalactic medium (Lyman-alpha forest and reionization), the formation of the first stars, black holes, globular clusters and the origin of dwarf galaxies.

A major emphasis of the CTC is on development and application of computational tools to enable forefront astrophysics research. These tools include symplectic integration codes for orbit evolution, parallel tree codes for N-body problems, and grid-based codes for magnetohydrodynamics. CTC members are also involved in development of community software packages for visualization and analysis of numerical simulations. Large-scale numerical simulations are performed both on the Department's in-house Beowulf cluster, the Borg, and at national supercomputer centers.

Student research projects in theoretical/computational areas are normally supervised by CTC professorial faculty, often in collaboration with CTC research faculty members and with members of the department involved in observational research.

The CTC currently has six professorial faculty members. Doug Hamilton is a planetary theorist who has worked on dust dynamics, Trojan asteroids, and rings in the solar system. Eve Ostriker's research focuses on star formation, hydrodynamics/MHD of the interstellar medium, and the structure and evolution of spiral galaxies. Cole Miller is interested in high energy processes in accreting neutron star and black hole systems, the evolution of structure in the early universe, and dynamics and gravitational radiation from intermediate-mass black holes. Derek Richardson works on rubble pile models of asteroids and formation of planetesimals in the early solar system. Chris Reynolds is interested in the central regions of black hole systems, as well as the physics of the jets that some black holes produce. Massimo Ricotti is a cosmologist interested in high redshift galaxy formation, nearby dwarf galaxies, the physics of the intergalactic and interstellar medium.

For more information, please see individuals' home pages linked under CTC People.