Research

Research

In my time at UC Berkeley as a double major in Astrophysics and Physics, I have found that I am most passionate about computational astrophysics. I love simulating the universe on a computer. There is something so satisfying about seeing a beautiful simulation of a physical system in our universe. I am passionate about simulating a wide range systems in astrophysics, anything from Magnetohydrodynamics of gasses in the Interstellar Medium to large scale cosmological simulations of the universe like IllustrisTNG. I romanticize the idea of being able to simulate the entire universe on a computer so much that I want to pursue that dream for the rest of my academic career. As of yet, my research projects have consisted of the following: Observational Cosmology under Prof. Filippenko, simulating mixing layers in the ISM with Athena++ under Michael Jennings, theoretical research on the plausibility of measuring the Hubble Constant using dynamical tides in inspiraling neutron star binaries under guidance of Dr. Hang Yu, and a multi-scale morphological analysis on the effects of baryonic matter on structure formation in cosmological simulations under guidance of Dr. Jia Lu of UC Berkeley.

Mixing Layers ULAB Project

In my second year of undergrad I had the opportunity to be a part of the Undergraduate Laboratory at Berkeley research program. In this program my group's research was focused on computational astrophysics concerning mixing layers in the interstellar medium. This has taught me a lot about how to use C++ as a tool for simulating magnetohydrodynamical phenomenon. In this project we used the open source code Athena++ as a basis for creating our own problem generator to model the interstellar medium. I was mentored by a fellow undergraduate student by the name of Michael Jennings. In this project I discovered my love of computational astrophysics. In this project I learned how to run MHD simulations using the library Athena++. Tasks involved writing problem generators in C++, learning to use GitHub and UNIX, and some elementary lessons in astrophysical fluid dynamics.

Figure I: This is the evolution of the mixing layers in the interstellar medium. Specifically a plot of temperature at distinct snapshots in time over the span of ~ 50 Myrs

LIGO Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

I had the privilege of being selected to be a participant in the LIGO SURF program in Summer 2020. In this program I worked closely with Dr. Hang Yu to investigate measuring the Hubble Constant using dynamical tides in inspiraling neutron star binaries.

Abstract:

The “Hubble Tension” is a large, newfangled problem in astronomy which has even larger cosmological consequences in its eventual resolve. Currently all calibration methods of the constant rely on the use of the electromagnetic spectrum-a method that does not rely on EM light but instead solely on gravitational radiation could prove extremely useful as both a backup for the unreliability of multi-messenger astronomy at its current state and as a new lens into cosmology which could potentially expand our understanding of light, gravity, and the universe. To extract a cosmological redshift from a gravitational waveform, one can look at both the point particle approximation phase contribution and the tidal phase contribution to the total phase of a gravitational waveform which allows for a break in the redshift degeneracy found in the mass parameters, which we can exploit to extract a cosmological redshift and thus the Hubble constant. Our analysis incorporates both f-modes and r-modes into the tidal phase contribution that are found in binary neutron star inspirals. We use the Fisher Matrix Analysis to generate our relevant possible errors on each parameter of the waveform.

Below is a presentation I gave of my research in my research seminar course at UC Berkeley. In the audience is Professor Mariska Kriek and my fellow peers. Following this is the link to the iPoster I presented at the 237th American Astronomical Society Meeting (click on the image to access the full interactive poster).

Observational Astronomy - Filippenko Research Group

As a member of the Filippenko Research Group at UC Berkeley I am responsible for monthly observing runs with the Nickel 1m telescope at Lick Observatory. On these observing runs we do follow-up observations on recent supernovae, transient objects, and globular clusters. I am also a member of the Zwicky Transient Facility checking team which identifies potential supernovae to do follow up studies on. In this research group my primary project has been to help develop a software package known as astroPIPS which is a Period Identification and Pipeline Suite for detecting periods of variable objects such as RR Lyrae Variable Stars, Cepheid Variable Stars, and potentially exoplanets. My role was to implement stellar parameter estimation models for RRab and RRc type variable stars. With the multi-term Fourier fitting to a folded light curve we can estimate stellar properties using empirically derived models. This software package is openly available now at pypi.org/project/astroPIPS/. Our project is currently observing variable stars in the M3 globular cluster to investigate Oosterhoff Types and better understand the evolutionary path of variable stars. In this project I have begun making use of the 1D MHD stellar simulation code MESA to simulate RR Lyrae light curves which we can compare to observed data which may allow us to investigate the effects of metallicity in RR Lyraes further than ever before.

Recently the group has begun participating in the race for discovering Kilonovae (BNS and BHNS mergers). We are constantly on the look out for new gravitational wave events from the LIGO & VIRGO gravitational wave observatories. One of our goals is to discover optical counterparts for a binary neutron star mergers or a neutron star-black hole mergers. Finding these optical counterparts would allow the group to recalibrate the Hubble constant and help address the Hubble tension in the scientific community. I am currently being trained to operate the Shane Telescope (3-meter) at Lick as well. This training requires extensive knowledge of how to utilize the Kast Double Spectrograph instrument for taking spectroscopic data of supernovae and other target objects.

In this research group, we often host workshops and journal clubs for new undergrads to learn from. Below is a presentation I gave for the group as a crash course introduction to Python.