Click here for a full list of my publications on ADS.
Selected Research Projects
Mapping the Dark Matter Wake Induced by the Large Magellanic Cloud
The density of the LMC's dark matter wake assuming three different models for dark matter physics. We compare cold dark matter without and with self-gravity to fuzzy dark matter with a particle mass of 1e-23 eV. The color shows the density contrast of the background "wind" dark matter particles as they move in the +y-direction past the LMC potential at the center of the box.
My latest project was centered on the interaction between the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and our own Milky Way (MW) galaxy. The LMC is the MW's largest satellite galaxy, and it has recently (cosmologically speaking) reached its first pericenter passage about 60 million years ago. As the LMC falls through the MW's dark matter halo, its gravity attracts the MW's dark matter to it, forming an overdense region in the MW's halo which traces the path of the LMC's orbit. This gravitational "wake" pulls back on the LMC and slows it down in a process called dynamical friction.
The nature of dark matter remains one of the most pressing mysteries in astronomy. The LMC's wake is a promising observable for distinguishing between competing dark matter models, as the strength and morphology of the wake depends on the microphysics of the dark matter particle. In the project, I created a suite of windtunnel-style simulations studying the formation of the wake in cold (CDM) vs. fuzzy (FDM) dark matter. While the CDM and FDM wakes are similar in size, the fuzzy dark matter wake is dynamically colder than the cold dark matter wake. Furthermore, we found that the dark matter wake's gravity strenghtens the formation of a wake in the Milky Way's stellar halo, providing an observable signature of the dark matter wake. The stellar wake is also slightly hotter in an FDM universe compared to a CDM universe, offering a plausible avenue for distinguishing CDM from FDM. Read more here.
The Structure of Eccentric Nuclear Disks
The mean semimajor axis of both stellar populations (heavy/light stars) as a function of time in my simulations. Each color line represents a different simulation with a different number of heavy stars. Mass segregation is apparent as the heavy population having lower semimajor axes than the light population. The number of heavy stars also affects the strength of the mass segregation.
As an undergraduate at CU Boulder, my honors thesis explored the internal structure of eccentric nuclear disks (ENDs), a type of star cluster found in galaxy nuclei where the stellar orbits about the supermassive black hole are highly eccentric and spatially aligned. I wrote a suite of N-body simulations that for the first time studied mass segregation in ENDs, a dynamical process found in more common types of star clusters by which the heaviest members sink to the center of the cluster. My simulations confirmed that mass segregation operates in ENDs as it does in spherical clusters and axisymmetric disks.
ENDs are also known for producing an elevated number of tidal disruption events (TDEs), where a star wanders too close to the supermassive black hole and is ripped apart by tidal forces. I also showed that mass segregation causes the most massive objects in an END to be more susceptible to tidal disruption when compared to less massive objects. Read more here.