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Finding Flybys in the Illustris Simulation
(2021-08-23)
The lifespan of a galaxy is punctuated by both mergers and flybys, yet most methods to track the galaxy assembly history within a cosmological simulation are designed to identify only mergers. Here, we present the full ...
Clusters on the Edge: The Interface Between Galaxy Cluster Outskirts and Large-Scale Intercluster Filaments
(2022-03-27)
There is a large-scale structure to the Universe, known as the cosmic web. Galaxy Clusters, consisting of hundreds to thousands of galaxies, form along and at the nodes of the cosmic filaments that make up this web. This ...
Planets and Planetary Nebulae: Different Evolutionary Pathways in the Stellar Life Cycle
(2022-03-29)
The stellar life cycle plays an important role in polluting the universe with heavy elements essential for life. This dissertation focuses on two different stages of a star’s life cycle – one of which allowed for multicellular ...
In Search of Small Planets Around Small Stars: Conducting Photometric Transit Surveys of Nearby M-dwarfs
(2022-03-27)
M-dwarfs have the lowest mass, size, luminosity and temperature of main sequence stars and also make up the majority of the total number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. However, since the first exoplanet systems that ...
Multiplicity Systems as Metrics for Stellar Evolution Theory: Spectroscopic Eclipsing, Eclipsing, and Unresolved Binaries
(2022-03-30)
Binary stars serve as the astrophysical laboratory in the extraction of stellar and orbital parameters and as calibration sites for stellar evolution theory. These systems come in three flavors, spectroscopic eclipsing, ...
Constraining the Galaxy-Halo Connection Through Accurate Modeling of Small-Scale Galaxy Clustering
(2022-03-23)
The Universe consists of structures of a wide variety of physical sizes. Over the last few decades, astronomers have succeeded in extensively cataloging this structure, both at the (relatively) small scales of stars within ...
Developing an Accurate Probe of the Galaxy-Halo Connection: Baryonic Effects, Small-Scale Galaxy Clustering, and Halo Model Extensions
(2022-03-29)
Over the past 14 billion years, the Universe has evolved from a state of nearly uniform density into a complex web of structure. Slight perturbations in the initial density field grew over time via gravity, resulting in ...
Spectroscopic and Adaptive Optics Observations of Protostellar Magnetospheres and Binary Star Evolution
(2021-07-09)
Overall, there has been growing progress in the astrophysical literature towards the characterization of young stellar evolution phenomenon. The use of sensitive, near-infrared observations continues to unravel these ...
MASS ACCRETION GROUPING ANALYSIS: USING MACHINE LEARNING TO INVESTIGATE DARK MATTER HALOS
(2022-11-23)
We investigate various methods of grouping halo mass accretion histories from a cosmological N-body simulation and the resulting two-point spatial bias of each population. While several authors have used the time at which ...
Machine Learning as a Tool to Predict Cosmological Structure Formation on Scales Large and Small
(2022-08-24)
Understanding how structures in the universe form and grow under the influence of gravity is fundamental to our understanding of how the universe we observe came to be. However, simulations of dark matter, which are one ...