Team

Assistant Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy 

My research focuses on using multi-messenger astronomy to study the Universe, coming at the same problem from multiple directions to gain a more complete picture. In particular, I study the coalescence of binary neutron stars with both gravitational waves and electromagnetic data, predominantly using wide field-of-view optical telescopes such as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) to identify these counterparts. I also use these telescopes to search for future sources from the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space-based gravitational wave detector that will study white dwarf binaries in our galaxy as well as binary black hole mergers.

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Recent News

http://cse.umn.edu/college/news/black-hole-collision-may-have-exploded-light
 

Research Groups

Co-Chair, Newtonian Noise Working Group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, 2017-present

Co-Chair, Long-duration Unmodeled Searches Work Group of the LSC, 2017-present

Associate Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy 

I am an astrophysicist examining the Sun. I concentrate on the Sun’s remarkable capabilities for accelerating particles. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections transform huge amounts of energy from magnetic fields into kinetic energy through processes that are not yet understood. We attempt to evaluate and explain these phenomena by examining the high­-energy emission from flares, all the way from large eruptive flares down to small, prevalent, unresolved ones. My main investigative tools are ultraviolet and X-­ray data. I also work on the development of new instruments for high-energy exploration of the Sun, with an emphasis on X-­ray sensors. Before reaching the large spacecraft stage, developing instruments are tested on sounding rockets, balloons, and CubeSats - small satellites about the size of a shoebox. In collaboration with several other institutions, we are developing hard X­-ray focusing telescopes for solar purposes via the FOXSI project, which has had three successful flights on suborbital sounding rockets from the White Sands Missile Range. We are also developing CubeSats to measure X-rays from the Sun and other astrophysical objects with high time precision. The capabilities of these and other new instruments will open a new door by which we can understand some of the most energetic phenomena in the solar system.

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Associate Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy 

Supernova (SN) explosions, Gravitational lensing, SN host-galaxy environments, SN Ia cosmology, Stellar populations, Star formation, Dark matter

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Research Groups

LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

WFIRST Science Investigation Team

Research Tags:

Astrophysics

Distinguished McKnight University Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy 

My research focuses on the physics of the earliest stages of the Universe and of the highest energies. In particular, I am interested in experiments that probe content and properties of the Universe today, and that can shed light on the evolution of the Universe and on the physics at high energy scales. I work on two such experiments.

Gravitational Wave Search: LIGO

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has built multi-kilometer interferometers at two sites: Hanford, WA and Livingston Parish, LA. These interferometers are designed to search for gravitational waves that could be produced in some of the most violent events in the Universe: mergers of two neutron stars or black holes, supernova explosions, or the Big Bang. Detection of gravitational waves would therefore open a new window into astrophysics and could potentially give us a view of the very early Universe, when the Universe was only a fraction-of-a-second old.

The gravitational wave detectors are sensitive to motions at the level of one ten-thousandth of the proton size. Much of my work is geared toward understanding and suppressing the contributions from various noise sources that are important at such sensitivities. Currently we are focusing on the seismic noise and on the Newtonian noise (fluctuations in the local gravitational field due to the motion of nearby masses). I lead an interdisciplinary project known as the Deep Underground Gravity Lab (DUGL) at the Homestake mine, SD, where we are developing a unique 3D array of seismometers with the goal of understanding the behavior of the seismic noise underground. While our main motivation comes from the field of gravitational waves, the DUGL project is also of substantial interest in geophysics and is therefore conducted in collaboration with geophysicists.

My group is also involved in searches for the stochastic background of gravitational waves using LIGO data. The origin of such a background could be cosmological (inflationary models, cosmic strings models) or astrophysical (integrating supernovae or pulsar signals across the Universe). We have placed the most stringent bounds on the energy density in gravitational waves and we have produced the first (upper limit) maps of the gravitational-wave sky, thereby constraining some of the models of stochastic gravitational-wave background. We are also pursuing searches for gravitational wave transients on the scale of minutes, hours, or longer. We expect all of these searches to make substantial advances in the next 3-5 years, taking advantage of the new, more sensitive data from Advanced LIGO (coming online in September 2015), and potentially resulting in the first detections of gravitational waves.

Dark Matter Search: CDMS

Together with Prof. P. Cushman, I am involved in the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment, which is designed to search for dark matter in the form of new particles, generically called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). There is an overwhelming evidence today that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible (i.e. dark), and most likely non-baryonic. However, the nature of dark matter is presently unknown, turning it into one of the most pressing problems in cosmology today. WIMPs represent one possible solution to the dark matter problem. They are particularly interesting because they naturally appear in supersymmetry and large extra-dimensions models - hence, discovery of WIMPs could have far-reaching implications for particle physics, in addition to solving the dark matter problem.

SuperCDMS has designed detectors based on crystals of germanium or silicon, operated at very low temperatures (30-50 mK), and in very low background conditions (deep underground in the Soudan mine, MN, with substantial shielding). These detectors are capable of identifying and rejecting the known particle backgrounds very efficiently, hence allowing a measurement of a signal due to a new particle (WIMP). CDMS has been at the forefront of the WIMP searches over the past decade, and will remain at the forefront with the approved second-generation experiment SuperCDMS-SNOLab. My research focus within CDMS is development and characterization of detectors in our cryogenic laboratory, mostly geared toward increasing the detector size which would simplify scaling up the total mass of the experiment. My group is also heavily involved in the analysis of CDMS data.

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Research Groups

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS)

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)

Deep Underground Gravity Lab (DUGL)

Distinguished McKnight University Professor (MIfA Director of Graduate Studies) Director, Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics

Galaxy formation and evolution: Massive galaxies, Evolution of galaxy structure.

Lyα line as a cosmological tool: Escape of Lyα photons, Large-scale structure, Lyα blobs.

Reionization: Lyman continuum escape fraction, IR background fluctuations.

http://homepages.spa.umn.edu/~scarlata/research.html

Visit M. Claudia Scarlata's Experts@Minnesota profile page.

Research Groups

Cosmology Survey Multi-Cycle Treasury Program (CANDELS)

Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) Collaboration

z-COSMOS Collaboration

Associate Professor of Physics

At Morris since 2004, her research interests have taken her from the development of computational models for carbon, polymers, and explosives to atmospheric physics and image processing. She now is working on the revival of the UMn Morris observatory for outreach and student research. She also is teaching physics courses throughout the entire curriculum.

[Note: 7 paragraphs like the Seven Directions of West, North, East, South, Above, Below and Center!]

Jim Rock (Sisseton Dakota Father)   has taught Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy for over forty years at reservation, urban and suburban high schools, colleges, tribal college and universities. He recently retired 2023 as the Director of Indigenous Programming for the Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium and as an instructor in the Physics and Astronomy department of Swenson College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  He taught a Physics and University Honors course there called Native Skywatchers: Indigenous Ethno- and ArchaeoAstronomy.  

Rock lived, travelled and still works globally. He decolonizes science using a travelling, 30 x 15 feet StarDome to "Indigenize and Digitize the Skies" for Indigenous community collaborative outreach and storytelling settings.  Rock still works as a consultant with Saint Paul Public Schools and their Como Elementary Planetarium, as well as the Science Museum of Minnesota on their Indigenous Roundtable for exhibits, and also with the Bell Museum Planetarium with the U of M and has presented teacher education seminars at UM Cedar Creek eco-research site for example. 

He advocates for Dark Sky preservation, light pollution reversal, sacred site and wetland restoration, and land return, and Indigenous interpretation at all sites of Turtle Island. He has published nine articles and a book on Dakota constellations and snake effigy mound symbolism and eclipse prediction methodologies. An upcoming 2024 book collaboration with archaeologists and anthropologists is in press after three years called Archaeology in a Living Landscape: Envisioning Nonhuman Persons in the Indigenous Americas Landscape (Univ. of Florida Press).

https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813079196

He was an Elder in Residence 2023-2024 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities COIN center.  He is a founding governing council member of the Makoche Ikikchupi Project makocheikikcupi.com to return exiled Ocheti Shakowin Oyate to their sacred homelands, and to live in sustainable earth lodge communities.  He was the previous chair of the Indigenous RoundTable at the Science Museum of Mni Sota. 

In 2011, he was the principal investigator and designed the first Native American experiment aboard STS-135 Atlantis, the last NASA space shuttle which also involved Native students from the American Indian OIC high school, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the Dream of Wild Health Native youth gardening project.  

Rock recently co-organized and presented at the Indigenous Eclipse Event on April 8, 2024 at University of Rochester, New York.  He taught science education courses to a cohort of Indigenous teachers in two master’s degree programs at the University of St. Thomas and Augsburg/UMD.  As a member-consultant on NASA’s Beautiful Earth Team, he worked with the Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, as well as the Onandaga Nation Tribal School and the MOST Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, New York.  

But most importantly, he is a grandfather to two high school grandkids visiting college campuses and continuing the ways of their Indigenous ancestors by making good choices, working hard, and learning from all their relatives, non-human and human alike.