Research Interests
Most of my current efforts are devoted to hardware and software
development for several radio/infrared telescope facilities,
including
CARMA,
SOFIA,
GBT, and
RLT.
My basic research interests include black hole physics, (active)
galactic nuclei, gravitational lensing, numerical techniques,
relativistic astrophysics, and celestial mechanics/stellar dynamics. My
research is theoretically oriented and usually involves substantial
numerical computation.
Abstracts of papers and downloadable preprints are available under
Publications.
Current Projects:
-
Revised CARMA correlator:
The first-light
CARMA
correlator is undergoing a hardware revision,
which will substantially improve its current capabilities.
I am working on embedded programming for the FPGAs
(Altera Stratix II devices)
used to process and cross-correlate the digitized telescope signals.
-
Green Bank Zpectrometer:
I designed and implemented the embedded firmware for the
Zpectrometer,
an ultra-wideband spectrometer mounted on the
Robert C. Byrd telescope,
located in Green Bank, WV. I also developed a major portion
of the high-level control software used to operate the backends.
-
CASIMIR:
For the
CASIMIR
receiver, one of the first-generation instruments to fly on
SOFIA,
I am creating the embedded FPGA configurations that will
perform the signal processing needed by the digital correlator
backend, as well as the control software to be used by both the
digitial and analog backends.
-
Collisional dynamics in nearly-Keplerian systems:
I am developing an advanced symplectic integration package called
HNBody
to study collisional dynamics in systems containing a single dominant
mass, in collaboration with
Doug Hamilton.
A graphical tour of some of my black hole
research, including both still images and MPEG animations.
Last modified: Apr 16, 2008.
Photographs are copyright © 1992-2012 Kevin P. Rauch.
All rights reserved.