The third observing run of advanced LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA brought unprecedented sensitivity towards a variety of quasi-monochromatic, persistent gravitational-wave signals. Continuous waves allow us to probe not just the canonical asymmetrically rotating neutron stars, but also different forms of dark matter, thus showing the wide-ranging astrophysical implications of using a relatively simple ...
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide unique laboratories to study the demographics, immediate stellar and gaseous environments, and accretion physics of the massive black hole population. Over the past few years, time domain sky surveys such as the optical Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) have led to a surge of TDE discoveries in galaxy centers. This talk highlights our efforts to constrain th...
Who are we? Where do we come from?With the enhanced capabilities of modern radio and infrared telescopes, astrochemistry has experienced a remarkable surge in detecting molecules within the Interstellar Medium (ISM). Some of these identified species hold prebiotic significance. The origins, activation, and storage of these molecules within the ISM remain a mystery. How, when, and where these co...
I will describe a model for galaxy formation and the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), based on the fact that cold dark matter halos form their gravitational potential wells through a fast phase with rapid change in the potential, and that the high universal baryon fraction makes cooled gas in halos self-gravitating and turbulent before it can form rotation-supported disks. Gas fragme...
While high-contrast imaging surveys in the past decade have produced only a handful of self-luminous exoplanets, they opened new gates for studying the forming environments of planetary systems. With multi-epoch and multi-wavelength imaging, I will talk about our ongoing efforts on scientific expeditions using current flagship observatories. They include (1) pinpointing the orbits of hidden pla...