Wick Haxton
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Physics
Where did the heavy elements such as gold and uranium come from, and what happens to matter when it is squeezed far beyond anything possible on Earth? New instruments now watch the universe's most violent events through several messengers at once.
- Fields
Physics
Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Topics
nuclear astrophysics
neutrinos
neutrino flavor mixing
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop the theory of kilonovae, the light emitted after neutron star mergers, to determine whether merger debris can sustain the chain of nuclear reactions that forges heavy elements, using high-fidelity merger simulations.
- Build theoretical tools for nuclear matter at several times nuclear density and connect them to neutron star masses, radii, deformability and long-term cooling.
- Apply quantum information techniques to the flavor mixing of entangled neutrinos trapped in supernova cores, in which neutrinos change type, and determine how this mixing affects explosion dynamics.
- Develop machine learning techniques to improve predictions of nuclear masses and decay rates, which are key inputs to models of heavy-element nucleosynthesis.
- Use supernovae and neutron star mergers as astrophysical laboratories to test the properties of neutrinos and dark matter.
More about the research
Merging neutron stars have been seen both through gravitational waves (ripples in space-time) and through light from the hot debris they throw off. Collapsing stars send out huge bursts of neutrinos, nearly massless particles that are caught in large underground detectors. These explosions reach energies, temperatures and densities that no laboratory can match, so they serve as natural laboratories for nuclear and particle physics.
Why it matters
This is basic science. The work aims to explain how the heavy elements were created, what form the ultra-dense matter inside neutron stars takes, and how neutrinos and dark matter behave. Answering these questions could shape the future directions of nuclear, particle and astrophysics. It could also help scientists interpret the gravitational-wave, light and neutrino signals now being recorded from mergers and supernovae.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rodolfo Barniol Duran
California State University-Sacramento, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Build "meter-to-parsec" numerical simulations that follow neutron star–neutron star and neutron star–black hole mergers from the pre-merger state to the regions where observed light is produced.
Antonios Tsokaros
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Develop an open-source general relativistic initial data code, based on the COCAL (Compact Object CALculator) code, that lets users set up starting conditions for magnetized neutron stars and black holes, alone or in binaries.
Hang Yu
Montana State University, MT·Astronomy & Astrophysics·Early-career
Model nonlinear tides in binary neutron stars by expanding the stars' fluid motion into eigenmodes (natural vibration patterns), including couplings between modes, and coupling them to gravitational-wave-driven orbital decay.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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