Compact remnants

Chris Clemens
Charles Evans
Dan Reichart

Chris Clemens primarily studies the self-excited resonant oscillations of stars or "starquakes". Through high precision monitoring of a star's brightness and surface velocities, he studies the interior properties using methods analogous to terrestrial seismology. His work in this area has focused on the compact stellar remnants known as white dwarf stars. He also studies low mass binary stars, both interacting and non-interacting, to measure basic stellar properties with high precision.

Charles Evans is interested in theoretical models of gravitational wave sources, such as the merger of compact binaries containing neutron stars or black holes, and in the use of ground-based laser interferometer detectors (e.g., LIGO) and space-based detectors (e.g., LISA) to make gravitational wave observations. Future detections of astrophysical gravitational wave events will almost certainly come from sources at cosmological distances. In principle such detections can be used as a probe of cosmological parameters out to redshifts of 1-3.

Dan Reichart's work focuses on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and in particular their use as probes of the early universe. With the launch of Swift in September 2003, Dan will use SOAR to detect and measure the distances to about 15 GRBs per year, two of which are expected to be more distant than the most distant object in the universe identified to date. In collaboration with Chris Clemens and the Goodman Lab, Dan is also engaged in the design and construction of small telescopes that respond to GRBs within seconds, when they are presumably very bright, without human intervention. Finally, Dan is building a partnership across institutions to monitor GRBs as the earth rotates.