(Anthony L. Piro)
Phone: (510) 643-6406, E-mail: tpiro@astro.berkeley.edu
I am a TAC fellow in the astronomy department at University of California, Berkeley. I completed my Ph.D. in 2006 under the guidance of my advisor Lars Bildsten (permanent member of the KITP). My research is in the field of theoretical astrophysics, focusing on the properties of accreting compact bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarfs. Some of the topics I have investigated are low mass X-ray binary (LMXB) evolution and accretion stability, nonradial mode spectrum and stability on rotating neutron stars, and interactions between accretion disks and white dwarf surfaces. Such "laboratories" allow for the exciting prospect of studying a wide variety of fields in physics (including gravity, fluid dynamics, magnetic fields, and condensed matter) in extreme physical environments--many of which cannot be replicated in experiments on Earth.
On the left is an illustration of the collapse of a massive star in which the large envelope forms a rotationally supported disk and may even lead to a relativistic jet. This "collapsar" picture may explain at least one class of gamma-ray bursts, cosmic explosions that are a million trillion times as bright as the sun! Gamma-ray bursts last for anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes, and for that time they are the brightest source of gamma-rays in the entire observable Universe. The energy from one event is enough to supply the entire world's electrical energy needs for approximately a hundred million billion billion years. For our research we have considered whether the disks associated with these events can fragment (as shown at the top of the disk), and have estimated the unique gravitational wave signature this process may create. |
Click picture for a larger version.
