Overview

The astrophysics research group at Texas Tech opened in January of 2013. We presently focus on ground-based and space-based electromagnetic and gravitational wave data of astrophysics in extreme environments and on the stellar populations of nearby galaxies.

Research Topics

The group has a few key areas of research. The areas of major current effort are listed below. The members of the group take broad interest in new developments in a variety of additional areas of astronomy, so please contact us if you're a prospective graduate student and don't see your topics of interest listed.

Extreme and Explosive Astrophysics

• Observational studies and modeling of Gamma-ray Bursts (Corsi)
• Radio observations of relativistic supernovae (Corsi)
• Observational studies of dynamics of dense star clusters (Maccarone)
• Accretion onto black holes and neutron stars and jet production mechanisms (Maccarone)
• Neutron star structure, oscillations, and microphysics (Owen)
• Accretion physics and tidal effects in the most compact binary stars (Kupfer)
• Observational studies of late stellar evolution with large-scale time-domain surveys (Kupfer)

Astronomical Surveys

• Understanding the X-ray binary populations of nearby galaxies (Maccarone)
• The Chandra and Swift Galactic Bulge Surveys, characterizing the close binary populations of the Milky Way (Maccarone)
• Development and application of machine learning algorithms for data-driven discovery in large astronomical surveys (Kupfer)

Instrumentation

• Science case development for new X-ray missions and the Next Generation VLA (Corsi & Maccarone)
• Development and exploitation of the BlackGEM telescope array (Kupfer)

Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

• Searches for gravitational waves associated with gamma-ray bursts and magnetars using LIGO (Corsi)
• Electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational-wave transients (Corsi)
• Searches for continuous gravitational waves from rapidly rotating neutron stars with LIGO (Owen)
• Stochastic Gravitational Wave background with LIGO, LISA and PTA (Romano)
• Multi-messenger studies of gravitational wave sources for LISA (Kupfer)

Tenure Track/Tenured Faculty Members

• Dr. Benjamin Owen, Ph.D., 1998, California Institute of Technology
• Dr. Alessandra Corsi, Ph.D., 2007, University of Rome Sapienza
• Dr. Thomas Kupfer, Ph.D., 2015, Radboud University Nijmegen
• Dr. Tom Maccarone, Ph.D., 2001, Yale University
• Dr. Joe Romano, Ph.D., 1991, Syracuse University

Other Senior Staff Members

• Dr. Vallia Antoniou, Instructor and Director of the Preston Gott Observatory
• Gwen Armstrong, Lead Technician for the Observatory