2022 Program

Who are we?

Program Staff:

• Patrick Sheehan – Program Director
• Peter Blanchard – Program Assistant Director
• Michael Stroh – Computational Lead
• James Schottelkotte – Admin/Coordinator
• Jillian Rastinejad – REACH Fellow, Mentor Lead
• Miguel Martinez – REACH Fellow, Computation Lesson Development and Instruction
• Fulya Kiroglu – CIERA BoV Fellow, Computation Lesson Development and Instruction
• Kari Frank – CIERA Director of Operations

Research Mentors:  Michael Stroh, Fulya Kiroglu, Giacomo Fragione, Miguel Martinez, Monica Gallegos-Garcia, Rachel Zhang, Liam O’Connor, Lindsay DeMarchi, Huei Sears, Jonathan Roberts, Vic Dong, Elena Gonzalez, Nabeel Rehemtulla

Additional Instructors and Helpers: Diego Munoz, Dennis Lee, Lindsay DeMarchi, Camille Liotine, Max Paik, Sam Imperato

What are the research topics?

Potential research projects for both sessions during Summer 2022 currently include, but are not limited to: 

• • The Velocities of Stars in the Milky Way 
  • The Habitable Zones of Other Worlds in the Cosmos 
  • The Effects of Stellar X-Ray and UV Flares on Exoplanetary Atmospheres 
  • Climate Models of the Earth
  • Short Gamma Ray Burst Afterglow Fitting 
  • How Bright are Accreting Black Holes in Binary Systems? 
  • Stellar Evolution – The Dynamic Lives of Stars 
  • Binary Stars with COSMIC 
  • How Can You Extract Energy from Black Holes? 

New projects are added each year, though, so more may be available during the program! 

Research projects for the extended portion of the program are drawn from ongoing research at CIERA, an overview of which can be found here. 

Reach Further Session 1 Topics

The 2022 1st cohort of High School students worked on the following research projects, created by the CIERA scientists below:

Binary Neutron Star Progenitors and their Merger Afterglows

Project Design: Vic Dong & Elena González

Student: Isabella Deutsch

In our project, the student studied the initial conditions necessary to produce binary neutron star systems, the progenitors of short Gamma-ray bursts (GRB). The student used the population synthesis code COSMIC to run a grid of simulations and determine the properties of the progenitor. Then, they examined short GRB afterglows and modeled them using simple techniques to gain insight about afterglow properties.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration bursts of mysterious origin

Project Design: Rachel Zhang

Student: Mihir Kondapalli

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration bursts of mysterious origin. One of the leading sources for FRBs is the magnetar model. The aim of this project was to statistically compare the FRB population to two potential processes of formation for magnetars. We found that all FRBs cannot be explained by either one channel or the other, so it is likely that there are multiple progenitor scenarios for FRBs.

Calculating LISA Strain of White Dwarf Binaries

Project Design: Lindsay DeMarchi

Student: Leanne Li

This project is to compress the knowledge of a galaxy to a sound— a concert of sounds, actually! The space-gassed gravitational wave observatory will hear thousands of dead stars orbiting one another. Just how many, and how loud they are, are the focus of this study.

Search for short period white dwarf binaries

Project Design: Jonathan Roberts

Student: Simon Nirenberg

In this project the student used The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) to search for short period white dwarf binaries. The student collected data from a particular section of the sky, then used Lomb-Scargle to generate the periodogram for each source. Then the student analyses the periodograms to locate the most periodic systems in the subset of data. Finally, the student used machine learning to calculate the error on each source.

Comparison Projectile Drag Force with Various Geometries

Project Design: Liam O’Connor

Student: Aiden Novick

The minimization of a projectile’s drag force is a fundamental problem in aerospace engineering. We combined volume penalization with the DEDALUS pseudospectral PDE solver to simulate laminar fluid flow around three different projectile geometries. When comparing the drag forces, we found that the smoothest projectile geometry had the smallest drag force.

An investigation of long and short gamma-ray burst host properties

Project Design: Huei Sears

Student: Raghav Sharma

We compiled a collection of LGRB (long-duration gamma-ray burst) afterglow metallicities and foreground quasar metallicities in addition to their radial positions to characterize the metallicity distribution of star-forming galaxies.  We also collected the neutral hydrogen column density for each of these sources and investigated the radial distribution of neutral hydrogen.  Additionally, we compared host metallicities for a sample of LGRBs and SGRBs (short-duration gamma-ray bursts).  Finally, we gathered images of several different sources in a variety of filters from the MAST archive to create three-color images using DS9.

Reach Further Session 2 Topics

The 2022 2nd cohort of High School students worked on the following research projects, created by the CIERA scientists below:

Black hole mergers in globular clusters

Project Design: Giacomo Fragione

Student: Duncan Blaha

Globular clusters (GCs) are very crowded stellar environments where dynamical interactions frequently trigger the formation of many exotic objects. In particular, GCs may form many merging black hole binaries during their life, making them unique gravitational-wave source factories. Thanks to gravitational-wave interferometers, we can hear the coalescence and merger of many black hole binaries in the Universe, but what we still do not know is how such fascinating systems formed and evolved. Understanding in more detail the evolution of stars and compact objects in GCs may be the key to answer these open questions and to ultimately provide an astrophysical interpretation to present and forthcoming gravitational-wave detections.

Hydrodynamic simulations of tidal disruption events

Project Design: Fulya Kiroglu

Student: Sofia Forte

In dense star clusters, dynamical interactions between black holes and stars are expected to lead to tidal disruption events through collisions and close encounters. Depending upon the distance at the closest approach, these events can lead to a fully disrupted star with roughly half of the stellar material forming an accretion disk around the black hole which can potentially be detected through electromagnetic signatures from the disk. The student performed hydrodynamic simulations of close encounters between black holes and main-sequence stars using the SPH code StarSmasher. Then, explored different outcomes of these simulations using Python plotting tools and learned how to make videos using the Splash package.

Identifying Transients with Machine Learning

Project Design: Nabeel Rehemtulla

Student: Asher Grossman

In dense star clusters, dynamical interactions between black holes and stars are expected to lead to tidal disruption events through collisions and close encounters. Depending upon the distance at the closest approach, these events can lead to a fully disrupted star with roughly half of the stellar material forming an accretion disk around the black hole which can potentially be detected through electromagnetic signatures from the disk. The student performed hydrodynamic simulations of close encounters between black holes and main-sequence stars using the SPH code StarSmasher. Then, explored different outcomes of these simulations using Python plotting tools and learned how to make videos using the Splash package.

Exploring the periods of variable stars

Project Design: Michael Stroh

Student: Ai-Dan Le

Mira variables are evolved asymptotic giant branch stars with very large luminosity variations. The student studied a set of Mira variables with very extensive light curve monitoring by multiple observatories and the American Association of Variable Star Observers. The student used the large dataset to determine the variability period of the Miras. The student also investigated period-luminosity relationships for the Mira variable sample, similar to the work undertaken for Cepheid variables.

Chaos and Instability in Planetary Systems

Project Design: Miguel Martinez

Student: Malachi Noel

It is now well known that various bodies in the Solar System are subject to chaos. In this project, the student looked at a simpler version of this problem, two planets around a star. Using the planetary integration Python package Rebound, the student studied how close these two planets could be placed before the system became chaotically unstable.

Evolution of Binary Systems

Project Design: Monica Gallegos Garcia

Student: Valencia Zhang

Many stars actually orbit each other in pairs or triples. The interactions between these stars are extremely important because they can lead to events like black hole mergers. Unfortunately, some of these interactions are very uncertain and not well understood. In this project we explored these uncertainties by simulating pairs of stars using two different softwares and compared how they evolved.