Munan Gong

Assistant Professor in Physics Department, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)

Welcome!

I am Munan Gong, currently an assistant professor in the Physics Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in the US. My research focuses on the theory and simulation of star and planet formation, with a focus on astrochemistry. Before moving to El Paso, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Astrochemical Studies (CAS) at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Physics at Tsinghua University in China, and my Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Princeton University in the US.

On this website, you can find out more about my research interests as well as my passion for the outdoors and nature.

Enjoy :)

What's New?

Chemistry in Athena++

Our chemistry module in the MHD AMR code Athena++ is publicly available!

Gong, M., Ho K. W., Stone J. M. et al. 2023, ApJS, 268, 42: Implementation of Chemistry in the Athena++ Code

Simulations of time-dependent chemistry + MHD with Athena++, Gong et al. (2023)

Female Physicist of the Week 2023

I am featured in the Female Physicist of the Week (Physikerin der Woche) 2023 by the German Physical Society (DPG)! Don't forget to checkout my YouTube video on Christmas Star with Soapbox Science Munich :)

ISM phases in TIGRESS-NCR simulations, Kim et al (2023)

Photochemistry module for ISM simulations

Photochemistry and Heating/Cooling of the Multiphase Interstellar Medium with UV Radiative Transfer for Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations, Kim, Gong, Kim, Ostriker 2023, APJS, 264, 10

We have a new paper on implementing photochemistry and heating/cooling in ISM simulations! I designed the chemistry module, and we are already running the TIGRESS-NCR simulations with our new method.

TIGRESS Data Release

We are releasing the data for TIGRESS simulations to the public! This include the original MHD simulations of ISM in the galactic disks, post-processed chemistry and radiation field, as well as synthetic observations of CO, HI and dust etc. All data and tutorial are on our website!

Molecular hydrogen from Gong et al. (2018, 2020)

Disk and hotspots around binary stars, Maureira et al. (2022)

Hotspots around Young Binary Stars

Dust Hot Spots at 10 au Scales around the Class 0 Binary IRAS 16293-2422 A: A Departure from the Passive Irradiation Model, Maureira, Gong et al. 2022, APJL, 941, 23

Our new paper is featured in ESO press! We found hotspots around this young binary star system, indicative of shock heating, a new phenomenon not included in the traditional passive radiation heating model of protoplanetary disks. I made theoretical calculations of shock heating, and now we are working on numerical simulations of this system to understand the the shock origin.

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