Prof. Zhang was named an APS Fellow by the American Physical Society

A high honor awarded by the American Physical Society, APS Fellows are elected based on "outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education". Specifically, Bing Zhang was recognized 

"for his significant scientific contributions to the understanding of the physical mechanisms of high-energy astrophysical sources, especially the prompt emission and afterglows of cosmological gamma-ray bursts."

All 2014 APS Fellows, along with Bing's entry, can be seen here.

Astronomers & physicists prepare for UNLV's new supercomputer

Several press articles have been written (see e.g., Review Journal, Tech Cocktail) describing UNLV's top-ranked new supercomputer, Cherry Creek, which is housed in Las Vegas' major data center company, Switch SUPERNAP.  Today several professors including Daniel Proga and Bernard Zygelman, as well as graduate students and postdocs who will be using Cherry Creek, attended a full day workshop at the Switch headquarters (hosted in cooperation with Intel with training provided by Colfax) to learn how to make optimal use out of Intel Xeon Phi processors.  Training included details on hardware design and parallel programming methodologies.

Sean Carroll will give the next Russell Frank Lecture on December 1st

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the emergence of complexity. Carroll is the author of The Particle at the End of the Universe, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, and Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London. Carroll has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report, PBS's NOVA, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and frequently serves as a science consultant for film and television. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette.

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Prof. Proga makes headlines on UNLV's College of Sciences website.

Prof. Proga was recognized by the college of sciences for his recent NASA award.  A brief Q&A interview can be found here.

Prof. Rhee's TEDx talk is featured on UNLV's College of Sciences website.

Having published an astronomy book accessible to the general public, Prof. Rhee is continuing to communicate his science to a wider audience.  A short opinion piece and a TEDx talk given by Prof. Rhee can be found here.

Prof. Nagamine and Prof. Proga attended the Kavli IPMU Focus Week Workshop on HYPER-ACCRETION

Prof. Nagamine and Prof. Proga attended the Kavli IPMU Focus Week Workshop on HYPER-ACCRETION during April 7-11 in Kashiwa, Japan.

Accretion, at rates substantially in excess of the Eddington limit, is implicated in tidal disruption events, gamma-ray bursts, some X-ray binaries and supermassive black hole formation. Despite this ubiquity, the physical principles that govern hyper-accretion remain to be determined. Recent advances in numerical radiation hydrodynamics, along with observations of the time-dependence of hyper-accreting flows following tidal disruptions, offer new opportunities to make progress. The workshop is intended to facilitate interaction between observers and theorists working on hyper-accretion in different astrophysical systems, and to identify new directions for future research.

A new faculty member will soon join the Astronomy group!

The Physics and Astronomy department conducted an extensive faculty search and received over 100 applications for this tenure-track position. We are happy and excited to announce that Dr. Rebecca Martin will join the department next year. Dr. Martin earned her PhD with Professor Jim Pringle in Cambridge and was subsequently a research fellow at both STSI in Baltimore and JILA in Colorado. She is an expert in accretion theory applied to proto-planetary systems, and will have much to bring to UNLV.

Prof. Bing Zhang coauthors a paper in Nature Physics.

A paper by Z. Lucas Uhm and Prof. Bing Zhang, entitled "Fast cooling synchrotron radiation in a decaying magnetic field and gamma-ray burst emission mechanism", is published in Nature Physics. In this paper, the authors make a breakthrough in understanding the radiation mechanism of GRBs, which has been a subject of debate for years. The link of the paper can be found here.

He Gao successfully defends his PhD and will move on to Penn State.

Dr. Gao arrived at UNLV in 2010 as member of Professor Zhang's group. He has been quite productive, publishing five first author papers and coauthoring seven more. Next year he will begin a postdoctoral position at Penn State working with Peter Meszaros. Below is the abstract to his thesis defense held earlier today:

Physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs): Gamma-ray bursts are most luminous explosions in the universe. Their ejecta are believed to move towards Earth with a relativistic speed, and a certain fraction of its kinetic energy will be released in electromagnetic channel, both in prompt gamma-ray emission and in late time broad-band afterglow emission. This part of the thesis first invents a new signal process method to study the GRB prompt light curves, then gives a review for a complete reference of all the analytical synchrotron external shock afterglow models and finally makes a detailed discussion about radiation mechanism for GRBs. Milti-messenger signals from double neutron star merger: As the technology of gravitational-wave and neutrino detectors becomes increasingly mature, a multi-messenger era of astronomy is ushered in. Since double neutron star merger serves as the top candidate for ground-breaking discovery of gravitational wave signals with advanced gravitational wave detectors, this part of the the thesis studies the possible electromagnetic (EM) and neutrino emission counterparts of this intriguing scenario, especially when the post-merger product is magnetar instead of black hole. Observational strategy and likely evidence for the relevant EM counterpart are also discussed.

PhD Student Tim Waters receives a summer school fellowship at Los Alamos.

A fourth-year graduate student working with Daniel Proga, Tim was admitted into the 4th Los Alamos Space Weather Summer School, where he will attend lectures and undertake a research project on plasma instabilities with a Los Alamos scientist. The school lasts for seven weeks and Tim will receive a $10,000 fellowship.

Daniel Proga was awared a prestigious NASA theory grant.

This $500,000 grant was awarded to Professor Proga to continue investigating the highly dynamical environments of supermassive black hole systems, which requires the use the numerical simulations run on supercomputers.  The grant money will enable him to strengthen his research efforts by supporting postdoctoral scholars and graduate students.