NMSU Computational Astrophysics

Associate professor at NMSU, Wlad specializes in planet formation, a very ancient question: "How did the Earth come to be?". Virtually every society in recorded history tried to answer this question. Wlad harnesses the full power of modern computers to build a digital lab to study the processes shaping planetary systems.

Debanjan’s research revolves around the fundamental questions on the physical processes that governed the dynamics of the early solar system and the formation of planetesimals, a major bottleneck in the current planet formation theory. He uses analytical theory and large numerical simulations to study the astrophysical turbulence in a protoplanetary disk setup to constrain the formation mechanisms of these few 100 km objects. He also works on meteoritics to use the vast pool of meteoritic data as a support to his theoretical findings.

Manny is working on the formation of Kuiper belt objects via streaming instability and pebble accretion. He is running sophisticated high-resolution 3D hydrodynamical models with the Pencil Code in the shearing box approximation, with gas and Lagrangian particles to represent the dust phase. The end goal is to explain the differences in bulk densities observed in low mass and high mass Kuiper belt objects as a result of the same formation mechanism.

Sarah has been conducting research on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa with the ultimate goal of joining the upcoming Europa Clipper mission as a project scientist upon graduation. Currently, she is working on adapting the well-maintained Earth mantle convection code ASPECT to model interior convection within the ice shell of Europa. This project will be combined with a previous work, where features across the surface of Europa were mapped and measured, in an attempt to place constraints on values of thickness of the ice shell and study the relationship between interior convection and exterior surface features.

Harrison investigates the origin mechanisms of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH). In particular, the accretion disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) offer a unique environment which may facilitate IMBH growth. AGN disks interact with nuclear star clusters capturing objects in the disk, concentrating them in orbital migration traps, and increasing the likelihood they will encounter and merge with similarly captured objects. To do so, Harrison conducts simulations of supernovae in disks using the Athena magnetohydrodynamics code in order to first understand the trapped feedback on disk structure.

Daniel utilizes the Pencil Code to analyze three-dimensional hydrodynamical models in the shearing-box approximation. In conjunction with radiative transfer calculations using RADMC3D, he is investigating whether optically thick regions can help reconcile the discrepancy between the observed mass in protoplanetary disks and the actual mass of formed planets; otherwise known as the missing-mass problem of planet formation.

Ali studies computational and numerical astrophysics with a focus on the atmospheric dynamics and chemical transport of Jupiter at high latitudes. In general, he is interested in the overall atmospheric energy cycles on gas giant systems, and process modeling of fluid phenomena that occur in such systems. He is particularly focused on the Jovian polar regions, where the banded jet morphology breaks down into discretized vortex structures, and how this dynamical behavior relates with the underlying thermochemistry of disequilibrium species as observed from the JIRAM instrument on-board the Juno spacecraft.