Colloquiums and Seminars(2018)

I will present the first direct evidence that the ubiquitous Dark Matter includes a small fraction of massive neutrinos (0.11eV summed over 3 flavours), with the rest composed of light axions (10^{-22}eV) in a Bose-Einstein state, motivated by String Theory. We have made the first cosmological simulations in this context, demonstrating the vast network of structure in the Universe is a beautiful interference pattern, with a standing solitonic wave at the center of every galaxy, representing the ground state. We have detected such a dark soliton in new detailed measurements of stars and gas at the center of our Galaxy. Furthermore, the LIGO motivated "primordial black hole" interpretation of the Dark Matter is excluded by our new Hubble Space Telescope discovery of individual stars detected through the huge intervening columns of dark matter in galaxy clusters. Instead, these gravitational wave sources can be better interpreted as cosmologically distant, lower mass colliding black holes of stellar origin, that are lensed by intervening galaxies.

The role of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) as sources of cosmic dust is the key to understanding the dust enrichment history in the universe. Far-infrared and submillimeter observations with Herschel and ALMA have revealed the presence of cool dust above 0.1 Msun in the ejecta of SNe, which is in good agreement with masses of newly formed dust predicted by theoretical studies. However, there remain two unsettled issues: formation time and survivability of dust. Observationally, there seems a growing pieces of evidence that dust mass gradually increases with time over 20 years. However, we see from a simple argument that this is not easy to be realized. On the other hand, the survivability of dust against destruction by the reverse shock, which is critical to know the final amount of dust ejection form SNe, is also hard to be evaluated observationally. In particular, it depends on the initial size distribution of dust, which is not constrained very well from infrared observations. In this talk, I will introduce some recent approaches that address these issues, and attempt to discuss how we can tackle them from now on.

In this talk, I aim to establish the important role played by ultra-strong magnetic fields to explain diverse astrophysical phenomena. First, I will talk about my doctoral thesis work on hypermagnetized white dwarfs. Such white dwarfs have strong interior magnetic fields greater than 4.4 x 10^{13} G, which introduce quantum mechanical effects, and also provide additional pressure support against gravity, yielding highly super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs in the range 1.7-3.4 Msun. I arrived at this conclusion by systematically progressing from a simple, spherically symmetric, Newtonian model to a rigorous, non-spherical, general relativistic model. Hypermagnetized white dwarfs have several important astrophysical implications, the most compelling being their role as the plausible progenitors of peculiar, highly over-luminous type Ia supernovae (SNeIa). These SNeIa violate conventional Chandrasekhar-mass explosion scenarios and seem to invoke white dwarf progenitors having mass greater than 2 Msun. Finally, I will talk about my current work on modeling the global properties of hypermagnetized accretion disks. Local magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accretion flows have shown that in the presence of a sufficiently strong but subthermal (plasma-\beta = Pgas/Pmag > 1) vertical magnetic flux, a large-scale, suprathermal toroidal field (plasma-\beta < 1) is generated, which becomes the dominant source of pressure support in the disk. I term such magnetically dominated disks as hypermagnetized accretion disks, which can resolve several observational shortcomings of the standard, geometrically thin, accretion disk model. I have performed a global, linear stability analysis of hypermagnetized accretion disks, whose results partly confirm the predictions of a local model. However, it also reveals important differences that highlight the necessity of a global treatment to accurately capture the geometric curvature terms, which are otherwise neglected in weak-field studies of accretion flows.

The interaction between massive ionizing sources (O and early B-type) with their natal molecular environment plays a constructive role of new generation star formation via. various mechanisms e.g., Radiation Driven Implosion, collect & collapse process etc. The aim of this colloquium is to understand some aspects of interaction of high and low mass stars with their environment on the basis of observational evidences of massive ionizing sources, young stellar contents and molecular/ionized gas properties. The young T Tauri stars show various types of complex profiles on the infrared emission due to disk around them, strong emission lines on their spectra, strong flux variation due to spot signatures. The characterization of those phenomena could be directly addressed to the properties of these young stars, and also helps to pick up the young population in a young cluster against the field population. Thus, multi- wavelength studies of star-forming regions (SFRs) provide census of YSOs, their fundamental parameters e.g. masses, ages, effective temperatures, circumstellar disks around them etc. From such parameter space, broad pictures emerge on the young star-forming regions like star- formation history, star-formation efficiency, timescales etc. We studied the stellar contents and star formation activities of three distant Galactic SFRs (e.g. NGC 2282, Sh2-149 complex, Cygnus OB7) using deep optical, near-Infrared, mid-Infrared and radio continuum observations. We estimated the stellar content of NGC 2282, a young cluster in the Monoceros constellation, using deep optical BVI and IPHAS photometry along with IR data from UKIDSS and Spitzer- IRAC. With the aim of investigating star formation mechanism, we studied the Galactic H II region Sh2-149 and associated molecular clouds with the help of optical spectra, CFHT- WIRCAM, FCRAO 12CO(1-0), JCMT 13CO(3-2). Adiitionally, we performed CCD I-band time series photometry of a young cluster NGC 2282 and Lynds 1003 cloud in Cygnus OB7 to identify and characterize the variability of pre main-sequence stars.

One of the major unsolved questions on the understanding of the AGN population is the origin of the dichotomy between radio-quiet and radio-loud quasars. The most promising explanation is provided by the spin paradigm, which suggests radio-loud quasars to have higher black hole spin. However, the measurement of black hole spin remains extremely challenging. We here present results comparing the mean radiative efficiencies of carefully matched samples of radio-loud and radio-quiet SDSS quasars at 0.3 1.5 in the radio-loud sample, suggesting that the radio-loud quasar population has on average higher black hole spin that the radio-quiet population. This provides observational support for the black hole spin paradigm.

Polarized (sub)millimeter emission from dust grains has long been established as a reliable way to probe magnetic fields in molecular clouds, based on the magnetic alignment of dust grains. At the same time, from theoretical studies, magnetic field is very important in the star formation and the evolution of protoplanetary disks, through either magnetorotational instability or magnetic-driven winds. The application of this method to the first resolved polarization observation in the protoplanetary disk HL Tau, however, yields rather unphysical magnetic field configuration and thus fails badly. This leaves an outstanding question: what are the origins of (sub)millimeter disk polarization? I will discuss the favored alternative mechanism, the “self-scattering” of dust grains, which successfully explains a lot of ALMA polarization observations to date. This brings both good news and bad news to the community. On the dark side, it’s harder to probe magnetic field with (sub)millimeter disk polarization, although we still found suggestive evidence in the IRAS 4A1 disk at long wavelength. On the bright side, polarization coming from “self-scattering” strongly depends on the properties of dust grains, including grain sizes, the optical depth, and thickness of dust disks. These allow us to study many important things, such as grain growth and dust settling.

Infrared observations of nearby galaxies and the Milky Way show that there are two main sources of ISM dust: the winds of evolved stars and supernovae ejecta. However, the total dust contribution from evolved stars relative to supernovae, and how it changes with metallicity, is less certain. Infrared photometric and spectroscopic Spitzer Surveys of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC, SMC): Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution (SAGE) resulted in the discovery of thousands of evolved stars. Here, I will describe how the composition and quantity of dust produced by these stars depends on metallicity. I will also discuss how the mid-IR stellar populations of the Magellanic Clouds can be used as a template for potential observations with JWST, and how we have applied this to our observing programs of Local Group galaxies and SN1987A with JWST.

Until recently, numerical simulations of low-mass star formation have been unable to produce large discs around a forming protostar. This contradicts observations. With the inclusion of non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), large discs are now being formed in numerical simulations, indicating the necessity of non-ideal MHD. If the inclusion of non-ideal MHD can self-consistently re-introduce discs, then what effect will it have on the formation of the protostar itself, or on large scales in star forming clusters? In this talk, I will first introduce the three non-ideal MHD processes: Ohmic resistivity, ambipolar diffusion, and the Hall effect. I will then discuss their effects on disc formation, the formation and evolution of the first and second hydrostatic core, and (if time permits) on star cluster formation.

While the hunt for disks around high-mass stars continues in the ALMA era, other interesting predictions of high-mass star formation theories remain untested. Dense accretion flows leading to the formation of the highest mass stars can become Jeans unstable, producing a near-equal mass binary. This can explain the near-equal mass binarity well-known in field massive stars. I will show high-angular resolution observations (VLT and ALMA) of two such systems in formation. Young high-mass stars are also expected to be bloated, with radii up to 400Rsun, because of high internal entropy. I will present new infrared observations supporting this hypothesis. Finally, I will present a new systematic search and discovery of infrared variability in a large sample of young massive stars.

Stars are a fundamental unit of the universe, and their formation is a fundamental astrophysical process. The role of magnetic fields in star formation remains controversial today. I will discuss several molecular cloud and star formation theoretical ideas that have very different roles for magnetic fields and describe techniques for observing magnetic fields in regions of star formation. The talk will focus on the Zeeman effect, the only technique for directly observing magnetic field strengths. I will describe specific tests of vario Stars are a fundamental unit of the universe, and their formation is a fundamental astrophysical process. The role of magnetic fields in star formation remains controversial today. I will discuss several molecular cloud and star formation theoretical ideas that have very different roles for magnetic fields and describe techniques for observing magnetic fields in regions of star formation. The talk will focus on the Zeeman effect, the only technique for directly observing magnetic field strengths. I will describe specific tests of various theories of the role of magnetic fields in star formation and the application of observational results in those tests. Finally, I will describe briefly a star formation scenario that meets all of the observational tests, and mention future observational opportunities. us theories of the role of magnetic fields in star formation and the application of observational results in those tests. Finally, I will describe briefly a star formation scenario that meets all of the observational tests, and mention future observational opportunities.

Planet formation is one of the fundamental ingredients in (exo)planetary sciences. Its importance is currently boosted up due to the recent significant progress of astronomical observations, theoretical modeling, and lab experiments. The most remarkable example may be the rapid accumulation of observed extrasolar planets and the characterization of their atmospheres. These studies are interesting in the sense that they can fill out a gap in research between the solar and extrasolar planetary systems. In this talk, I will present all the key results of my latest work. These include theoretical modeling of protoplanetary disks, out of which planetary systems are born, semi-analytical modeling of chondrule formation and the origin of asteroids, and a comprehensive analysis of solid accretion onto planets and its implications for the composition of observed exoplanets. In these studies, the outcome of the recent observations and lab experiments is utilized in order to derive new insights into the formation mechanisms of planets including the solar system. The combination of these attempts may enable us to move towards a comprehensive understanding of planet formation, covering a full size range from mm-sized, tiny dust grains to planetesimals and up to fully formed planets.

The observables of the large-scale structure such as galaxy number density generally depends on the density environment (of a few hundred Mpc). The dependence can traditionally be studied by performing gigantic cosmological N-body simulations and measuring the observables in different density environments. Alternatively, we perform the so-called "separate universe simulations", in which the effect of the environment is absorbed into the change of the cosmological parameters. For example, an overdense region is equivalent to a universe with positive curvature, hence the structure formation changes accordingly compared to the region without overdensity. In this talk, I will introduce the "separate universe mapping", and present how the power spectrum and halo mass function change in different density environments, which are equivalent to the squeezed bispectrum and the halo bias, respectively. I will then discuss the extension of this approach to inclusion of additional fluids such as massive neutrinos. This allows us to probe the novel scale-dependence of halo bias and squeezed bispectrum caused by different evolutions of the background overdensities of cold dark matter and the additional fluid. Finally, I will present one application of the separate universe simulations to predict the squeezed bispectrum formed by small-scale Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum and large-scale lensing convergence, and compare with the measurement from BOSS Lyman-alpha forest and Planck lensing map.

Since the discovery of the first double neutron star system (also, the first binary pulsar), PSR B1913+16 (the famous Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar), such systems have been extremely valuable for tests of general relativity and the study of gravitational waves, decades before the LIGO detection. They have also been a great tool for studies of stellar evolution. In this talk I will present two of the most important systems known (the Hulse-Taylor and the ``Double Pulsar" system), but then emphasize the extraordinary systems discovered in the last 3 years, with a discussion of their enormous potential for advancing our knowledge of fundamental physics and stellar evolution. I then discuss some of the trends emerging from this study, particularly the correlation between the mass of the second-formed NS and the orbital eccentricity of the systems, and what this tells us about supernova astrophysics.

Protoplanetary disks, the sites of planet formation, are often observed around young stellar objects. However, it remains unclear as to how and when such disks form during the process of star formation, and whether they possess forming planets or not. Formation and evolution of disks are closely related to angular momentum transfer from their parental dense cores to the vicinity of protostars under the influence of the magnetic field. In this presentation, I will introduce my project aiming to link the analyses of the gas kinematics and the magnetic field in protostellar sources in order to understand the role of the magnetic field in disk formation and evolution. In addition, the gas kinematics in protoplanetary disks can exhibit signatures of dynamical interaction between planets and disks, and thus it can be a signpost of forming planets. In this presentation, I will also introduce my project of searching for planets embedded in protoplanetary disks by detecting signatures induced by disk-planet interaction.

The details of what physical processes between turbulence, gravity, or magnetic field regulate the mass transfer from the large scales (several parsecs) of clouds and filaments onto the small scales of clumps and cores is still highly debated. The origin of such a debate resides in our (past) inability to track the magnetic (B) field properties over such a large range of scales and densities that are involved in the star formation process. In this talk, I will report the pioneer study of the correlation of the B field and velocity gradient, and the interplay between turbulence, gravity and B field within star forming filaments G34.43. Different fragmentations within clumps are compared. For the second part of the talk, I will present the approaches to look for embedded planets within disks using the indirect evidences obtained from SUBARU, VLT, ALMA and future JWST.

Through many years of data taking, the IceCube observatory located at South Pole observed few tens of high energy astrophysical neutrinos. The flavor composition of these neutrinos could change during propagation as a result of neutrino oscillation and possible new flavor transition mechanism. Hence a precise measurement on the flavor composition of astrophysical neutrinos arriving on Earth could test new physics beyond Standard Model. In this talk, we shall review recent developments and future prospects of this research field.

The driving and mass injection mechanisms of Active Galactic Nucleus jets are long-standing problems. M87 is the galaxy that has the second largest angular-size black hole and a relativistic jet, which allows us to test the theoretical models of these mechanisms. The edge brightened structure has been observed with VLBI in the downstream at least up to ~10^4 Rg from the black hole. This structure can be explained by the synchrotron emission from the steady axisymmetric electromagnetically-dominated jet (Takahashi et al. 2018). They reveal that the magnetic field lines must penetrate the black hole, not the accretion disk, and the black hole must rotate rapidly. Recent observations have shown a new feature, fork-like triple-ridge structure (Asada, Nakamura & Pu 2016; Hada 2017). We show that the above model with different electron density distributions can produce the triple-ridge structure. Such study will constrain the electron injection mechanism and will be required to improve the emission models around the black hole which would be observed by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations are a powerful tool for studying non-linear formation processes of galaxies. Studies using cosmological galaxy formation simulations have revealed that "feedback", which is the process that gives energy and/or momentum to gas from stars and active galactic nuclei, plays crucial roles in galaxy formation. I explain how different feedback processes operate on different mass scales of galaxies. The simulations are also useful for observers as a tool to plan future observations. I briefly introduce how we collaborated with observers for ALMA observations of high-redshift emission line galaxies. Finally, I show some problems that current simulations have.

Strong gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the mass distribution in the Universe. Lensing is sensitive to the total mass distribution along the line of sight, making it a unique probe of dark matter in lensing galaxies, and useful for studying resolved properties of the magnified background sources. I briefly discuss applications of lensing magnification to recent ALMA observations of the lens SDP.9. Strong lensing is also valuable for cosmology through lensed quasars, which can be monitored to measure the "time delay" between the multiple images. This can be used to measure the "time-delay distance", which is primarily sensitive to the Hubble constant (H0). This method of measuring H0 is independent of type Ia supernovae and CMB observations, and may shed light on the growing H0 discrepancy between local universe and CMB measurements. I discuss the H0 Lenses In COSMOGRAIL’s Wellspring (H0LiCOW) project, which has measured H0 to ~3.8% precision for a flat Lambda CDM cosmology from three time-delay lenses. Our results are in moderate tension with the latest Planck results for a similar cosmology, hinting at possible new physics beyond the standard LCDM model and highlighting the importance of this independent probe. To improve this measurement, as well as leverage the power of strong lensing to study galaxy structure and magnified background sources, we require deep wide-area imaging surveys to build up a statistical sample of lenses, which are quite rare. The Hyper-Suprime Cam survey is an ongoing multiband imaging survey using the Subaru Telescope that will cover 1400 deg^2 of the sky to a depth of r~26. I present the current work of the HSC SSP strong lensing working group, which is focused on searching for new lenses and using these systems for studies of galaxy structure and cosmology. The search methods and science cases being developed now for surveys such as the HSC SSP are necessary to prepare for the upcoming revolution in strong lensing from LSST and Euclid, which will discover orders of magnitude more lenses than are currently known.

The coherent pattern of distant galaxy images distorted by gravitational lensing of large-scale structure, i.e., cosmic shear, is a powerful probe of matter distributions in the Universe. Cosmic shear is a unique cosmological probe and is especially sensitive to the combination of the matter density parameter Ωm and the amplitude parameter of matter fluctuations σ8, i.e., S8(α) ≡ σ8(Ωm/0.3)^α with α ∼ 0.5. Recent cosmic shear measurements such as DES and KiDS prefers 2-3σ lower value of S8 than Planck CMB data in ΛCDM model. The tension may indicate some physics beyond ΛCDM model such as dynamical dark energy or modified gravity. Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program is a wide-field imaging surveys using a gigantic imaging camera on the 8.2-meter Subaru telescope. The unique property of the HSC is the combination of its depth (i~26 at 5σ) and excellent image quality (i-band seeing∼0.58”), which enables us to measure cosmic shear signals up to higher redshifts with lower shape noises than KiDS and DES. We measure cosmic shear power spectra with HSC survey first-year shear catalog covering 137 sq. deg. of the sky. The high effective number density of 16.5 per sq. arcmin after the photometric redshift cut of 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.5 allows a high significance measurement of cosmic shear signals with the total signal-to-noise ratio of 16 in the multipole range 300 ≤ l ≤ 1900. I present the current status of the HSC cosmic shear analysis.

Many of the facilities poised to dominate optical and infra-red astronomy over the next 20 years have put galactic archaeology (in a nutshell, high-redshift science with low-redshift data) at the core of their scientific programmes, including Gaia, PFS, HSC, LSST, MOONS, JWST, WFIRST, ELT, MSE and TMT. They promise surveys of galactic stellar halos, tidal streams and dwarf satellites with ultra-deep photometry (exemplified by outstanding deep imaging from HSC) and fine-grained spectroscopy of stars in the Local Group (the domain of PFS). These data will provide stringent new probes of the evolving relationship between star formation and the growth of cosmic structure at the heart of the LCDM model, but only if we can successfully combine Milky Way and extragalactic data in a sufficiently detailed theoretical framework, integrated with results from other wavelengths and epochs. In this talk I’ll outline my work to develop efficient cosmological simulations (called STINGS) that bridge the gap between all these exciting observations and the big picture questions of galaxy formation theory. I’ll show quantitative insights these simulations give into how the hierarchical disruption of satellites contributes to galactic structure across scales ranging from the Milky Way to the most massive clusters, and highlight some of the pressing problems and priorities for this field. I’ll also give an update on the DESI Milky Way Survey, an ambitious wide-area spectroscopy programme targeting our own Galaxy’s stellar halo that will be highly complementary to the Galactic Archaeology goals of PFS.

A growing number of fast radio bursts (FRB) has been detected but the source is still unknown. One of the leading models is the young neutron star model, in which a pulsar (or magnetar) of < 100 yrs-old surrounded by a wind nebula and supernova remnant are considered and connections between FRBs and luminous pulsar-driven supernovae are predicted. I will discuss multi-messenger/multi-wavelength approaches for testing the scenario.

The conventional particle interpretation of cold dark matter (CDM) still lacks laboratory support and struggles to explain the basic properties of dwarf galaxies. This tension motivates wave dark matter (ψDM) composed of extremely light bosons (m ψ ~10^(-22) eV), which suppresses structure below the kpc scale by the uncertainty principle but retains the large-scale structure predicted by CDM. In the first part of this talk, I will present the first cosmological ψDM simulations that achieve an unprecedented high resolution capable of resolving dwarf galaxies. These simulations reveal that every ψDM halo has a prominent soliton core surrounded by fluctuating density granules. These predictions compare favorably with the observations of galaxy formation, the Lyman-alpha forest and reionization, and also help explain gravitational lensing flux anomalies. The second part of the talk focuses on GAMER, a GPU-accelerated adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code. A rich set of physics modules is incorporated and which outperforms other widely-adopted AMR codes by one to two orders of magnitude. The code scales well to thousands of GPUs and achieves a uniform resolution as high as 10,240^3 cells. I will present several ongoing astrophysical projects with GAMER that require substantially higher resolution than previously feasible, including turbulence cascade in galaxy cluster mergers, star formation in isolated disk galaxies, supermassive black hole accretion, and ψDM simulations.

Supernova shock breakout is an electromagnetic phenomenon in which observable features are highly sensitive to the motion and the shape of the shock front. Therefore it would be important to study the emission properties for obtaining information on the mechanisms of a stellar explosion and stellar evolution shortly before the explosion. The previous studies suggest that the shape of the observed light curve of XRO 080109/SN 2008D implies the asphericity of shock propagation (Suzuki & Shigeyama 2010a, Couch et al. 2011). Furthermore, the power-law feature of the observed X-ray spectrum can be reproduced by bulk-Compton scattering in the shock with a radial velocity of > 30% of the speed of light (Suzuki & Shigeyama 2010b). Though the studies have revealed the importance of the observational properties, there have been no studies which reproduce the shapes of the observed light curve and spectrum with a model, taking bulk-Compton scattering into account. In this study, we investigate the relationship between the properties of the emission and the motion of the shock, by using a toy model in which ejecta works as a piston in a spherically symmetric CSM. By using a Monte-Carlo method, we found that both the observed light curve and spectrum of XRO 080109 can be reproduced by a shock with a velocity of 60% of the speed of light and a circumstellar matter with a mass loss rate of 5.e-4 solar mass per year.

The distribution of matter around massive proto-stars tells us which are the physical processes dominating the formation of massive stars. These physical processes can in turn help us to determine whether massive stars are formed as an upscale version of their low-mass counterparts. We can limit the effects of some physical by studying massive young stellar objects (MYSOs) which are where the ionising nature of the radiation from the massive star has not started to change the circumstellar environment. One of the most observed MYSOs is AFGL 2591, which has similar properties to those found in other MYSOs (e.g. jets/outflows) and it is relatively isolated. In this presentation, I will show the latest results of our multi-wavelength dust continuum study of the density and temperature structure of this source and molecular line emission study of its envelope kinematics. In particular, I will show how our radiative transfer modelling explains resolved Herschel 70 micron data, and evidence of rotation in the inner envelope as mapped by methyl cyanide emission.

In 2012 the international SKA Organisation decided to site the SKA-mid frequency telescope in Africa, hosted by an eight-country African partnership. SKA-mid will be an array of thousands of parabolic antennas spread out over baselines of thousands of kilometres. As a first step toward SKA-mid, South Africa is constructing MeerKAT, a 64-element array of 13.5-m offset parabolic antennas. MeerKAT is a precursor of the SKA mid-frequency dish array, and following several years of operation as a South African telescope will be incorporated into the SKA phase 1 facility. Construction of MeerKAT is well advanced at the African SKA central site on the South African Karoo plateau. The array is scheduled to be operational in mid 2018. The MeerKAT science program will consist of key-science, legacy-style, Large Survey Projects, plus open time available for new proposals. The Large Survey Projects are direct pathfinder to key science programs being planned for the SKA. I will present an update on the MeerKAT progress and specifications, the key science programs. The completion of MeerKAT foreshadows one of the most significant data challenges of the coming decade and the beginning of an era of big data in African astronomy. The new South African Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy has been set up to build capacity to meet the data challenge of the SKA in Africa.

During the formation phase of gas giants, circumplanetary gaseous disk form around the planets. Circumplanetary disks are important not only for mass supply to gas giants but also for formation of regular satellites. Because of the comparatively small size-scale of the sub-disk, quick magnetic diffusion prevents the magnetorotational instability (MRI) from being well-developed at ionization levels that would allow MRI in the parent protoplanetary disk. In the absence of significant angular momentum transport, continuous mass supply from the parental protoplanetary disk leads to the formation of a massive circumplanetary disk. We have developed an evolutionary model for this scenario and have estimated the orbital evolution of satellites within the disk. In a certain temperature range, we find that inward migration of a satellite can be stopped by a disk structure due to the opacity transitions. We also find that the second and third migrating satellites can be captured in mean motion resonances. In this way, a compact system in Laplace resonance, which are similar to inner three bodies of Galilean satellites, can be formed in our disk models.

Understanding the nature of the first stars is a major challenge of modern cosmology. Despite their importance for the formation of subsequent stars and galaxies, their mass distribution is not well constrained due to a lack of direct observations. Extremely metal poor stars in the Milky Way allow to constrain the mass of their progenitor supernovae and thereby provide precious information about the first generation of stars ("Pop III"). I will present a new diagnostic to reliably distinguish mono-enriched from multi-enriched metal-poor stars, based on the individual and combined chemical yields of Pop III supernovae. Milky Way satellites are the most promising regions to find second generation stars that were enriched by only one previous supernovae. We apply our new diagnostic to recently observed stars from the TOPoS survey and I will show that our results help to optimise upcoming Galactic archaeology surveys to detect more of these precious stellar fossils, which allow to better constrain the mass function of the first stars.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found at the centers of most massive galaxies today. But over 120 quasars have now been discovered at z > 6, including ULAS J1342, an 800 million solar mass BH at z = 7.5, and ULAS J1120, a two billion solar mass BH at z = 7.1. We have developed new radiation hydrodynamical simulations of SMBH evolution in cosmological environments with the Enzo AMR cosmology code in which X-rays from the BH are fully coupled to nonequilibrium primordial gas chemistry and hydrodynamics. These models include ionizing UV radiation, winds and SNe due to star formation in the host galaxy, all of which are known to regulate the growth of the BH and the rise of the stellar populations themselves. Our models reproduce for the first time all the observed properties of J1120: BH mass, radius of its H II region, and the star formation rate, metallicity and dynamical mass of the central 1.5 kpc of its host galaxy. I will discuss these models as well as detection limits for the first quasars in the NIR and 21 cm as a function of redshift in connection with future AGN surveys at 5 < z < 15 by Euclid, JWST, the E-ELT and SKA.

Primordial stars formed about 200 Myr after the Big Bang, ending the cosmic dark ages. They were the first great nucleosynthetic engines of the universe and may be the origins of the supermassive black holes found in most massive galaxies today. In spite of their importance to the evolution of the early universe not much is known for certain about the properties of Pop III stars. But with the advent of JWST, WFIRST and the 30 m telescopes it may soon be possible to directly observe their supernovae in the NIR and thus unambiguously constrain the properties of the first stars. I will present radiation hydrodynamical calculations of the light curves of the first SNe in the universe and discuss strategies for their detection. I will also describe how some may already have been captured in surveys of galaxy cluster lenses such as CLASH, Frontier Fields and GLASS.

We infer the star formation rates in dark matter halos at different redshifts from halo merger histories expected in a Lambda CDM cosmology using Bayesian inference and Bayes ratios to restrict the model complexity, constrained to match the observed stellar mass/luminosity functions of galaxies at different redshifts and the local cluster galaxy luminosity function, which has a steeper faint end than that of field galaxies. The only other assumptions that we make are that the star formation rate of central galaxies depends on the halo mass and redshift and that when a galaxy becomes a satellite its star formation rate is quenched exponentially and it can eventually merge with the central galaxy on a dynamical friction timescale. We find that 1) the star formation in the central galaxies of high mass halos (>10e12) has to be boosted at high redshift beyond what is expected from a simple scaling of the dynamical time; 2) below z=2 the star formation in halos below 1e11 must be quenched, which is not directly expected in standard stellar feedback models and is most easily explained by some form of preheating, and implies that there is a significant old stellar population in present-day dwarf galaxies with M_star < 1e8 and steep slopes for the high redshift stellar mass and star formation rate functions 3) the stellar mass of galaxies assembles in one of three ways depending on halo mass: > 1e12 the galaxies assemble through mergers and should hence have a spheroidal morphology and between 1e11 and 1e12 (e.g MW) it assembles slowly and at z>2 has less than 5% of its mass in place, which has extreme observational consequences.

It is well accepted that the giant planets originated in a more compact, stable, and multi-resonant configuration due to interactions with the gas in the protoplanetary disk. Following the dispersal of the gas, the planets migrated to their current locations through 1) interactions with the planetesimal disk and 2) a dynamical instability during which two or more of the planets experienced mutual close encounters. The latter are necessary to account for the current orbital configuration of the planets. The exact dynamical mechanism which triggered the instability between the giants remains an open question. The currently favoured mechanism is the resonant crossing of one of the ice giants and Saturn. In this talk, I will introduce the state of the art in our understanding of this dynamical scenario. I will highlight successful aspects of the model. Namely, how it does extremely well in reproducing the orbital structure of the Solar System, and in particular, the Kuiper Belt. I will discuss how dynamicists are progressing from using just the observed dynamical structures of the Kuiper Belt, but are now including compositional constraints in their models. In particular, I will focus on the Colours of the Outer Solar System Origins survey, or Col-OSSOS, and what Col-OSSOS revealed about the migrations of the gas-giants, and the compositional structure of the protoplanetary disc itself. Despite accounting for many of the properties of the current Solar System, the favoured dynamical scenario has two problematic requirements. Firstly, it demands an extremely compact initial resonant configuration. Secondly, it invokes the presence of a 5th gas-giant in the early Solar System, along with the implicit condition that the 5th planet is ejected! In the last part of my talk, I will present a new idea, the Grand Smack, in which the instability amongst the gas-giants is triggered by a large impact onto one of the 4 planets. Specifically, we demonstrate that the impact responsible for producing Uranus’s large obliquity is also sufficient to cause the system to go dynamically unstable. Our model can broadly account for all the major features of the Solar System’s dynamical architecture, including the relative locations of the gas-giants and their orbital excitations, the formation of the Kuiper Belt, and the preservation of the initial low dynamical excitation of the asteroid belt and the terrestrial planets. Critically, compared to models that invoke other instability mechanisms, a broader range of initial orbital configurations is able to reproduce the known Solar System. Our model’s strength is that it explains the overall architecture of the Solar System as the result of an event we know has happened - the tilting impact on to Uranus, rather than invoking the presence of a 5th planet.

A sizable work has been performed by examining the magnetic dynamo process of supernova driven turbulence using kiloparsec scale MHD simulations. These simulations were able to generate a self-consistent magnetic field structure for the diffuse interstellar medium. In the recent work we have been able find a way of comparing these supernova results with the Planck large-scale polarization observations by using the radiative transfer tool SOC. This was achieved by putting the observational point of view inside the kiloparsec scale computational volume, creating a set synthetic all-sky maps from the MHD model. From this these maps, we computed their polarization fractions and polarization angle dispersion functions, averaged them into combined 2D-histograms, which were used for comparison with the Planck results. We found that our SN-turbulence simulation is able to produce comparable behavior to Planck, but is limited by its spatial resolution and horizontal extent. We also note that polarization does not directly correlate in any way with the supernova shocks. Instead, they are connected with the small-scale magnetic fluctuations generated by the SN-driven dynamo.

Our understanding of neutron stars is advancing remarkably. A new windows into neutron star behavior and structure has been the recent direct detection of gravitational and contemporaneous electromagnetic radiation from merging neutron stars. The identification of several two solar mass neutron stars challenges our current understanding of how dense matter can be sufficiently stiff to support such a mass against gravitational collapse. Programs underway to determine simultaneously the mass and radius of neutron stars constrain and inform theories of neutron star interiors. At the same time, an emerging understanding in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) of how nuclear matter can evolve into deconfined quark matter at high baryon densities is leading to advances in understanding the equation of state of the matter under the extreme conditions in neutron star interiors. This talk will review these recent developments and describe the consistent picture of neutron star interiors that is coming into focus.

We study the dependence of surface mass density profiles, which can be directly measured by weak gravitational lensing, on the orientation of haloes with respect to the line-of-sight direction, using a suite of N-body simulations. We find that, when major axes of haloes are aligned with the line-of-sight direction, surface mass density profiles have higher amplitudes than those averaged over all halo orientations, over all scales from 0.1 to 100 Mpc/h we studied. While the orientation dependence at small scales is ascribed to the halo triaxiality, our results indicate even stronger orientation dependence in the so-called two-halo regime, up to 100 Mpc/h. The orientation dependence for the two-halo term is well approximated by a multiplicative shift of the amplitude and therefore a shift in the halo bias parameter value. The halo bias from the two-halo term can be overestimated or underestimated by up to ~ 30% depending on the viewing angle, which translates into the bias in estimated halo masses by up to a factor of two from halo bias measurements. The orientation dependence at large scales originates from the anisotropic halo-matter correlation function, which has an elliptical shape with the axis ratio of ~ 0.55 up to 100 Mpc/h. We discuss potential impacts of halo orientation bias on other observables such as optically selected cluster samples and a clustering analysis of large-scale structure tracers.

Unbiased supernova searches led to the recognition of the class of superluminous supernovae (SLSN) about one decade ago. These events can be a factor 100 more luminous than ordinary supernovae. Some SLSNe show narrow hydrogen lines and are likely powered by interaction with a dense circumstellar medium. In one case, the progenitor star lost several solar masses of gas in the 30 years leading to the explosion; the reason for the extreme mass loss is not understood. Other SLSNe do not show narrow lines, but show broad lines and are stripped of hydrogen. These features are difficult to explain in an interaction scenario. Another possibility is radioactive power, but the required mass of 56Ni can be larger than allowed by the light curve and the expectations of 56Ni synthesis. Power from a magnetar (highly magnetized pulsar) with a millisecond period can roughly explain light curves and spectra.

A class of supernova remnants show evidence for interaction with molecular clouds. A first approximation to a molecular cloud is a low density medium with embedded clumps. If the shock wave becomes radiative in the lower density medium and the resulting dense shell interacts with clumps, high pressures can be produced, as are observed. These remnants are observed to be sources of high energy gamma-ray emission, both at GeV (with Fermi) and TeV (with Cherenkov telescopes) energies. The emission appears to be associated with slow shock waves moving into clumps. The particles being accelerated are likely to be from the preshock population of cosmic rays, as opposed to injected from the thermal particles. Simulations of cloud interactions allowing for the cloud structure resulting from supersonic turbulence are underway. Observed remnants show some evidence for features resulting from such an interaction.

The standard model of cosmology states that the dark matter present in the Universe consists of particles that mainly interact gravitationally. This model is extremely successful in explaining the large scale structure: from the Cosmic Microwave Background to how galaxies distribute in the Universe. In this scenario, the dark matter dominated formation of structure is hierarchical: small structure form first, and then acts as building blocks to form bigger structure. One of the key predictions of this scenario, or any scenario where formation of structure is hierarchical, is the presence of hundreds to thousands of small dark matter halos orbiting galaxies like the Milky Way. However, due to their dark nature and small scales, these have proven difficult to find. Nevertheless, while most of the smallest of the dark halos will remain dark forever, some will be lit by small and dim galaxies, providing a window of opportunity to probe the nature of dark matter and the formation of structure at the smallest scales. In this contribution, I will present some results of a new quest for the search of the dark halos around the Milky Way, via the detection of small satellite galaxies. By improving the detection algorithms and by the use of new deep wide surveys, I have pushed the detection limits yielding several new discoveries, including the discovery of the enigmatic galaxy Crater 2. Even when being the fourth largest in the vicinity of the Milky Way, Crater 2 remained hidden until very recently due to its extreme properties. These same properties may be in tension with our current models of the Universe posing interesting new challenges to the standard model of cosmology.

Debris discs are tenuous rings of rock and ice around main sequence stars left over from planet formation processes. Their presence, most commonly inferred through the detection of excess emission at infrared wavelengths, is a signpost for the presence of a planetary system around the host star. At millimetre wavelengths, the dust emission is believed to closely trace the unseen belt of dust-producing planetesimals (asteroids and comets). Resolved imaging of debris discs at millimetre wavelengths reveals structures, e.g. azimuthal asymmetries, that can be linked to perturbation of the planetesimal belt by an unseen companion. Here I will present modelling of a sample of debris discs that have been observed at infrared and millimetre wavelengths in order to reveal the size scales of these systems as a function of the host stars' luminosities, and then used that as a ruler to interpret the emission from unresolved systems in order to identify potentially perturbed systems.

Although filamentary structures are ubiquitous in molecular clouds, basic observational constraints are needed to clarify the role of filaments in the mass assembly process. Using ALMA Band 3, we have performed full-synthesis imaging of the N2H+ (1-0) emission in the remarkable IRDC complexes, M17 SWex, where a delayed onset of massive star formation was reported in the two hubs at the convergence of multiple filaments of parsec length. We derive gas kinematics by fitting the hyperfine components of N2H+ spectra. The mass accretion rates are in the range of 10^-5 to 10^-4 Msun/yr. The line widths suggest a transonic nature of dense gas in the filaments. A comparison study of viral parameters from filaments, clumps, to cores is made. The observation results all together are consistent with the hierarchical gravitational collapse scenario.

First stars (Population III stars) play vital roles in the early cosmic evolution by initiating cosmic reionization and chemical enrichment of the intergalactic medium. The characteristic mass of first stars and its initial mass function are thus essential to understand the formation and evolution of the first galaxy, one of the important observational targets by the next-generation telescopes. The numerous theoretical/numerical works suggest various paths of first star formation and final masses depending on the star-forming environment properties. A large cosmological sample of first star formation shows a wide range of stellar masses from 10 to 1000 Msun depending on the properties of the star-forming gas cloud. Under a quite limited condition, very massive first stars can form with 1e5-1e6 Msun and leave a promising seed for the formation of observed high-z quasars. Furthermore, a recent study shows the formation of the first star clusters and massive star binaries. The eventual formation of the remnant black holes will leave a close binary of massive black holes, which can be a progenitor of strong gravitational wave sources. This talk will introduce these latest results and prospects on the formation theory of first stars.

The large-scale structure of the Universe observed via galaxy redshift surveys contains valuable cosmological information, and it has been playing a major role to improve our understanding of the Universe. However, ​the observed large-scale structure ​​appears distorted due to the observed ​​systematics in ​​the redshift determination, known as redshift-space distortions (RSD). Recently, the measurement of RSD is renewed with great interest as a probe of gravity on cosmological scales. In this talk, after reviewing the 'standard' RSD caused by the peculiar velocity of galaxies, I w​ill ​discuss yet another distortion arising from general relativistic effects. ​U​​nique feature of the​​ n​ew ​distortion e​ffects ​is demonstrated b​​​​ased on the simulated catalog taking a​ proper ​account of the relativistic effects,​ ​and detectability and implications to cosmology will be also discussed.

Invisible matter component called cold dark matter (CDM) is now widely accepted in cosmology as an essential building block of the cosmic structure formation. One important feature of CDM is that the phase-space velocity distribution was virtually null at very early time. This leads to, at later time, several interesting phenomena in nonlinear stage of gravitational dynamics: shell-crossing and multi-stream flow. In this talk, I will focus on these two phenomena, and discuss a way to describe quantitatively their phase-space structures, which is compared with state-of-the-art Vlasov-Poisson and cosmological N-body simulations.

In this talk, I will show the recent results obtained in deep ALMA observations of the explosive outflow located in the heart of the Orion Nebula, the Orion Kleinmann-Low Nebula (Orion KL). These observations revealed over a hundred arcsecond wide and tens of arcseconds long high-velocity 12CO (J=2−1) streamers that approximately point to a central region where a young stellar massive system disintegrated about 500 yrs. The kinematics and morphology of the molecular streamers confirmed the explosive nature of the outflow in Orion KL. The energetics of the explosive outflow require the formation of a binary with an AU-scale or smaller semi-major axis. This event may have led to stellar merger which powered the explosion in the gas. Finally, I will show the latest efforts to reveal more cases where possible mergers events could led explosive outflows like the one in Orion KL.

In this work, the evolution of a cold debris disk is investigated through detailed long-term numerical simulations. The dynamical configuration is formed by an interior giant planet and an exterior massive debris disk, where the mass is accounted for by the 50 largest, dwarf-planet-sized objects (DPs), in the disk. We demonstrate that when the giant planet is not present, DPs can greatly stir the eccentricities and inclinations of disk particles (a self-stirring scenario), in linear proportion to the total mass of the DPs; on the other hand, when the giant planet is included in the simulations, the stirring is approximately proportional to the mass squared. This creates two regimes: below a disk mass threshold (defined by the total mass of DPs) , the giant planet acts as a stabilizing agent of the orbits of cometary nuclei, diminishing the effect of the scatterers; above the threshold, the giant contributes to the dispersion of the particles. Additionaly, when the giant planet is present, its strongest mean motion resonances, located along the belt, are replenished with new material (test particles) due to the influence of the DPs. When the disk is massive enough, both resonant and non- resonant particles are stirred quickly to encounter the giant and form a scattered disk component, greatly increasing the rate for the delivery of cometary material to the inner part of the system.

I will present optical and radio properties of optically-faint radio galaxies (RGs) found by an on-going project, a Wide and Deep Exploration of Radio Galaxies with Subaru HSC (WERGS). RGs possess powerful radio-jets, which could give a so-called feedback effect on host galaxies. As the host galaxies are thought to be typically massive, RGs are important for understanding the evolution of massive galaxies. We carried out a cross-match between the VLA FIRST radio catalog and the deep (i_AB < 27) and wide imaging catalog by Hyper-Suprime Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We successfully identified ~3600 radio-AGNs in the 156 deg^2 field (Yamashita et al. 2018). The number of the matches is equivalent to ~50% of FIRST sources, which is higher than that of SDSS counterparts (~30%). Optically-faint RGs (i_AB > 21) in the sample are mostly located at photometric redshifts z > 1 and show higher radio-loudness (log R > 4) than the SDSS RGs. The results might infer that these optically-faint RGs have low accretion rate or obscured nuclei. Some of the optically-faint RGs have blue optical colors which are not consistent with that of passive galaxies but can be explained by predominant young stellar populations. Our optically-faint RG sample might include “evolving” RGs that are star-forming. I will also discuss the redshift evolution of such blue RGs.

Most meteorites formed during the earliest stages of the Solar System history, and as such are unique testimonies of physical processes that occurred at the time of Sun formation. In peculiar, they contained some short-lived radionuclides such as 10Be (T=1.4 Myr) whose origin can be ascribed to energetic particles irradiation. I will present the latest experimental results relative to the detection of 10Be and other irradiation products in CAIs, and show how they help constrain residence timescales of solids in the inner regions of the protoplanetary disk before they are launched by the x-wind.

About 4.6 billion years ago, some event disturbed a cloud of gas and dust, triggering the gravitational collapse that led to the formation of the solar system. One hypothesis is that a nearby supernova - a star exploding at the end of its life cycle - initiated this event. My collaborators and I have examined why earlier forensic evidence based on studies of extinct radioactive nuclei in meteorites have been inconclusive, and shown how recent results from modeling supernovae and their impact on star formation have opened up new directions in researching the formation of our solar system.

Mount Kent Observatory at the University of Southern Queensland is host to Australia's newest astronomical research facilities. MINERVA-Australis is the only Southern hemisphere precise radial velocity facility wholly dedicated to follow-up of thousands of planets to be identified by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite (TESS). Mass measurements of these planets are critically necessary to maximise the scientific impact of the TESS mission, to understand the composition of exoplanets and the transition between rocky and gaseous worlds. MINERVA-Australis is now operational. I present first-light results and give an update on the status of the project, which will ultimately host six 0.7m telescopes feeding a stabilised spectrograph.
The Stellar Observations Network Group (SONG) is establishing a node at Mount Kent. SONG-Australia will complete the global longitude coverage, delivering breakthroughs in fundamental understanding of the interiors of stars for decades to come. SONG-Australia is designed on a "MINERVA" model, whereby fibres from multiple small telescopes feed a single high-resolution spectrograph. This approach provides expandability and reduces cost by using factory-built components that have been well-tested by the MINERVA teams. As a result of these innovations, SONG-Australia is expected to be fully operational by late 2019.

The initial mass function (IMF) is suggested by observations to be universal in spite of the wide variety of star-forming environments. Several major physical mechanisms, such as thermal energy, turbulence, gravity, magnetic field, and radiation, are governing the formation of the stars, or even before that, the formation of the prestellar cores. I will first discuss the possible impact of initial conditions on the mass spectrum of stars forming inside clusters. The observations suggest a high-mass end slope of -1.3 for the IMF, while this does not seem to have been readily reproduced by any of the present day simulations. A series of numerical experiments was performed with a wide range of initial density, turbulent energy level, and magnetic field strength. We compare the stellar mass spectrum outcome to the prediction adapted from the gravo-turbulent fragmentation model of Hennebelle and Chabrier (2009). The IMF from simulations is well reproduced with a powerlaw density PDF, that is often observed in collapsing clumps. Nonetheless, a shallower slope is suggested. On the other hand, the simulations exhibit a lower mass limit that truncates the mass spectrum in extremely dense environments, giving a peak of the distribution that is independent of the large-scale conditions. We propose a mechanism to explain the peak of the IMF using a combination of the tidal forces and the thermodynamics of the first Larson core. A characteristic mass of 10 times the mass of the first Larson core, that is, around 0.2 solar masses, is robustly predicted. These results suggest that, the universality of the IMF is probably true only under certain circumstances, or possibly it is the initial conditions and local physics that are universal and some particular conditions are not so common!

One of the paramount problems in modern astrophysics is to understand the end of the cosmic dark ages when the first stars and galaxies transformed the simple early universe into a state of ever-increasing complexity. Modern cosmological simulations suggest that the hierarchical assembly of dark matter halos provided the gravitational wells that allowed the primordial gases to form stars and galaxies inside them. The first galaxies comprised of the first systems of stars gravitationally bound in dark matter halos are naturally recognized as the building blocks of early Universe. In this talk, I will discuss the physical mechanics behind the first galaxy formation and present the predictions of their observational signatures which will be examined by the future observatories such as JWST and TMT.

Besides the four gas planets, the outer Solar System contains thousands of minor bodies, the majority of which reside in the region beyond Neptune, thus known as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). The first TNO (besides Pluto, discovered in 1930), was discovered in 1992; in recent years, the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) has discovered and tracked over 800 TNOs, vastly increasing the sample of TNOs with well-known orbits and well-known discovery circumstances. I will give an overview of the many discoveries and results from OSSOS, in particular my work on light curve analysis of these TNOs.

I would like to talk about our findings regarding how to optimize the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements and how to estimate their uncertainties. The results are summarized in two papers :
1) Improving baryon acoustic oscillation measurement with the combination of cosmic voids and galaxies (Zhao, Chuang, et al., arXiv:1802.03990);
2) Robustness of the covariance matrix for galaxy clustering measurements (Baumgarten & Chuang, arXiv:1802.04462).
From paper #1, we find that the BAO measurement can be improved (smaller uncertainty) by > 10% on top of the BAO reconstruction when including the information from voids, i.e. the method increases >20% of survey volume effectively. We have validated the methodology with the final BOSS observed galaxy sample and mock catalogues.
From paper #2, we find the covariance matrix for the 2-point clustering measurement is insensitive to the fiducial cosmology used for generating the mock galaxy catalogues. We obtain the conclusion by generating thousands of mocks with different cosmology models. On the other hand, within the same cosmology model, we find that the covariance matrices for the 2-point clustering statistics are different when varying their higher order statistics. These findings are essential for the data analysis of future surveys.

X-ray emission from accreting black hole systems provide information on the accretion geometry of the innermost region around the black hole. Observational evidence indicates that most black hole systems are consisted of an accretion disk around a central black hole with a hot illuminating corona above the disk plane. The reflection of the X-rays emitted from a corona of energetic particles surrounding an accreting black hole from the accretion disk can be used as a probe of physical processes around the central engine. The most prominent feature of the reflection spectrum, Fe K-alpha fluorescent line, can be broadened by a series of special and general relativistic effects. Measuring the broadness of the line gives an idea of the inner radius of the accretion disk and hence the black hole spin. This talk mainly focuses on modelling the X-ray spectra of low-mass X-ray binaries (LXMBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGN), including systems with complex outflows, using a self-consistent relativistic reflection model.

Abundances of heavy elements in metal-poor stars help us understand the origin of elements and evolutionary histories of galaxies. Recent astronomical high-dispersion spectroscopic observations have shown that there are characteristic features of the abundances of heavy elements. Neutron-capture elements such as Sr, Ba, and Eu have star-to-star scatters in extremely metal-poor stars. On the other hand, there is an increasing trend toward lower metallicity in the abundances of Zn. However, astrophysical sites and enrichment of these elements are not well understood. In this talk, I discuss the enrichment of heavy elements using high-resolution N-body/SPH simulations of dwarf galaxies. I show that neutron star mergers can be the astrophysical sites of neutron-capture elements. I also present abundance of heavy elements can be indicators of star formation histories and metal mixing of galaxies.

I discuss progresses in various areas of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Science in which I have been directly involved in my thirty years of research career in India. These areas can be broadly divided into four topics: (a) Black Hole Astrophysics: Theoretical studies of relativistic flows around black holes and neutron stars; Data Analysis and extraction of physical param- eters; (b) Ionospheric Science: Earth as a gigantic detector; Ionospheric Science using Very Low Frequency Radio Waves and Earthquake prediction; (c) Astrochemistry/Astrobiology and Origin of prebiotic molecules on Earth and finally, (d) Low cost balloon borne instrumentations and science. In addition, I also discuss a new optical facility that we have developed, especially to study exoplanets, variable stars and GRB afterglows. We discuss possible collabortions in these directions.

Theoretically long Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are expected to happen in the low-metallicity environments, because in a single-massive star scenario, low iron abundance prevents loss of angular momentum through stellar wind, resulting in ultra-relativistic jets and the burst. In this sense, not just a simple metallicity measurement, but low iron abundance ([Fe/H]$\lesssim$-1.0) is essentially important. Observationally, however, oxygen abundance has been measured more often due to stronger emission. In terms of the oxygen abundance, some GRBs have been reported to be hosted by high-metallicity star-forming galaxies, in tension with theoretical predictions. We here compare iron and oxygen abundances, for the first time for GRB host galaxies (GRB 980425 and 080517) based on the emission-line diagnostics. The estimated total iron abundances, including iron both in gas and dust, are well below the solar value. The total iron abundances can be explained by the typical value of theoretical predictions ([Fe/H]$\lesssim$-1.0), despite high oxygen abundance in one of them. According to our iron abundance measurements, the single-massive star scenario still survives even if the oxygen abundance of the host is very high such as the solar value. Relying only on oxygen abundance could misguide us on the origin of the GRBs.

The interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies harbors the reservoir of metals deposited over the history of star formation of a galaxy and contains the imprint of the astrophysical processes governing a galaxy's evolution. Understanding how the ISM becomes enriched with heavy elements, particularly in primordial ISM, would place important constraints on galaxy evolution models. Local universe dwarf galaxies provide a wide range of metallicities to study star formation and feedback on the ISM in conditions that may be representative of early universe environments.

We have been carrying multi-wavelength studies of low metallicity dwarf galaxies with the goal of understanding how metallicity impacts the evolution of the gas and dust and thus the star formation properties in galaxies. Their low mass, prominent star formation activity, and metal-poor ISM have a striking impact on the physical processes that take place to shape the structure of the ISM. The properties of the gas and dust associated with molecular clouds, photodissociation regions and ionised phases of dwarf galaxies show notable differences from those of their more metal rich counterparts. I will describe what we know to date from surveys and modelling efforts of the dust and gas and star formation properties in low metallicity dwarf galaxies.

Intensity mapping has emerged as a promising tool to probe the three-dimensional structure of the Universe. The traditional galaxy surveys probe the large-scale structure based on individual galaxy detection, whereas intensity mapping uses the integrated emission from all sources in a 3D pixel (or voxel) to trace the underlying density field. In this work, We develop a formalism to quantify the performance of both approaches when measuring large-scale structures. We compute the Fisher information of an arbitrary observable, derive the optimal estimator, and use it to determine the best strategy for tracing large-scale density field for any given survey. In this talk, I will first give an overview of intensity mapping method, and then introduce the formalism and application of this technique.

Supernovae are the spectacular birth places of neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes in the universe. In this talk, I will talk about the current challenges in supernova numerical modeling and the microphysics inside. In particular, I will focus on the supernova explosion mechanism, the formation of proto-neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes, and multi-messenger signals from core-collapse supernovae.

Since the first detection of gravitational waves from coalescing binary black holes by LIGO on 14 September, 2015, we have entered a new ear of gravitational wave astronomy. In addition to this tremendous success in the direct detection of gravitational waves, there is also impressive progress toward the detection of primordial gravitational waves through the B-modes polarization of cosmic microwave background anisotropies. These developments will upgrade the current level of cosmology to an unprecedented level, where gravitational waves play the central role, which I call "gravitational wave cosmology". In this lecture, I discuss the current status and future prospects of gravitational wave cosmology.

In the first part of the talk, I will discuss the origins of the polarization of dust continuum emission from young star disks, with emphasis on scattering by large grains. The scattering-induced polarization provides a probe of grain growth in disks that is the first step towards the formation of planetesimals and ultimately planets. In the second part, I will discuss the formation of rings and gaps in magnetized wind-launching disks that are weakly ionized, with emphasis on a new mechanism that relies on the reconnection of highly pinched magnetic fields to produce regions magnetized to different levels. More magnetized regions tend to accrete faster, forming gaps, whereas less magnetized regions accrete more slowly, allowing matter to accumulate into dense rings. Implications of the rings and gaps formed through this mechanism for the dynamics and size evolution of dust grains will be briefly discussed.

Dark matter continues to pose one of the most important questions in modern cosmology. Gravitationally lensed multiple images of galaxies, quasars and stars provide several opportunities for testing the clumpiness of dark matter on small scales due to, for example, compact objects, axion mini-clusters and waves, or subhalos orbiting on galactic or cluster dark matter halos. The idea of using highly magnified stars by lensing clusters to probe this small-scale granularity in the dark matter will be discussed.

Halo assembly bias is a phenomenon that the clustering of halos exhibits a dependence on additional properties beyond their halo mass (such as formation time and concentration). Halo assembly bias has been observed in simulations but not in observations. Recently, Miyatake et al. 2015 reported the observational detection of halo assembly bias using redMaPPer galaxy clusters; however, their observed signal was much larger than the expected signal from N-body simulations. Since then, there have been a couple of researches claiming that their detection of assembly bias is due to projection effects. In this work, we implement the redMaPPer-like algorithm, which can be applied to the simulations so that we can do more direct comparisons between simulations and observations, and we study whether the observational detection of assembly bias is truly due to projection effects or not.

This talk is devoted to the picture of evolution of small carbonaceous grains in conditions of photodissociation regions (PDR’s): from dense cold molec- ular cloud to ionised region with enhanced ionisation field. Also, a brief re- view of experimental and theoretical studies on carbon compounds will be made in the talk.
Carbonaceous species are highly allotropic, they may have different structures. This property is widely investigated in laboratories and is used in industry. PDR’s are kind of space laboratories where modifications of carbonaceous species occur. Large swings of conditions in PDR’s (temperature, ionisation field, gas and dust density, etc.) on small scale promote to these modifications. Almost all types of carbonaceous species can be traced across PDR’s: from amorphous carbons to fullerenes. That is why PDR’s are very interesting and important objects for investigation of carbonaceous species.
Astrophysical observations of PDR’s such as Orion Bar, Horsehead, NGC 7023 give opportunity for checking theoretical ideas of photo-processing of carbonaceous species. It is possible to follow its evolutionary changes at different conditions within a single object through mid-infrared (IR) emission bands. Observational variations of the mid-IR bands (at 3.3-3.4, 6.2, 7.7, 8.6, 11.2 mkm) indicate changes in dust size and structure, ionisation stage and fraction of grains with aliphatic bonds. The observations of abundance of some small hydrocarbons (C2H, C4H, c-C3H2, l-C3H, etc.) may tell us about photo-destruction of carbonaceous macromolecules under high ul- traviolet field.

Gas around galaxies, the circumgalactic medium (CGM), contains signatures of galactic outflows and gas accretion, which are crucial processes driving the evolution of galaxies. To better understand these processes, one can investigate the physical properties of the CGM via its absorption line signatures imprinted in the spectra of background quasars. In this talk, I will present the latest results of the CGM properties as well as its connection with galaxies probed by making use of the largest spectroscopic dataset provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I will show that (1) the metallicity of the circumgalactic gas evolves consistently with the metal production of the Universe and reaches the solar value at redshift ~1; (2) the metals are carried by small dense clouds with the sizes ~10 pc; (3) the spatial distribution and kinematics of the gas around galaxies strongly correlate with the star formation activity of the central galaxies. These findings uncover a new picture: the CGM is enriched by galactic outflows, consisting of ~10^6 metal-rich gas clouds --- a non-negligible amount revealed for the first time.

Modern surveys of absorption spectra of hundreds of thousands of quasars at z>2 have opened a new method to study the large-scale structure of the Universe at high redshift. The Lyman alpha forest traces density fluctuations of intergalactic gas, and damped Lyman alpha systems and metal lines trace halos hosting galaxy formation. Absorption systems are large-scale structure tracers with a linear bias factor that can be measured and compared to model predictions. The BOSS survey measurements of the Lyman alpha forest power spectrum and cross-power with quasars, DLAs and metal absorbers will be presented, and their implications for theories of the intergalactic medium and galaxy formation will be summarized.

Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) is an important class of supernova because of its applications in cosmological and production of iron-peak elements. However, the diversity of observed SNe Ia shows that the possible parameter space of SNe Ia can be much larger than we might have expected. In this talk, I will present my recent works done on multi-dimensional modeling of SN Ia and its explosive nucleosynthesis. I will further discuss how the chemical abundances depend on the explosion models and configurations. I will discuss ] how we can induce to the progenitors of the observed SNe Ia and the role of SN Ia in galactic chemical evolution.

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), widely believed to result from thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs (WDs), are extremely important phenomena in the universe, owing to their roles as distance indicators in cosmology and major sources of the Fe-peak elements (Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni). However, many of their fundamental aspects, e.g., how their progenitors evolve and explode, remain elusive. In this talk, I will first review recent progress in observational and theoretical studies toward solving this "SN Ia progenitor issue". Then I will focus on X-ray observations of SN Ia remnants to measure abundances of the Fe-peak elements, the key for constraining the nature of progenitor WDs, such as the final mass and central density. I will also discuss future prospects for high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of SNe Ia remnants in the XRISM and Athena era, based on the remarkable achievements from Hitomi observations of a galaxy cluster.

I will summarize what is currently known of the chemistry of comets. Sublimation of nuclear ices near perihelion generates the coma - a multi fluid plasma whose understanding requires consideration of a variety of chemical processes. Compositional studies, from ground and space, especially of organic molecules, isotopologues, and ortho-para ratios can provide important clues as to their origins, and to their possible role in providing water and biomolecules to the early Earth.

tars more massive that about ten times the mass of the sun typically end their lives by collapse of their central core to a neutron star or a black hole. These stars are also responsible for the production of about half of all elements heaver than hydrogen and helium, making the elements necessary to the formation of rocky planets and necessary to life. In this colloquium I will briefly review the evolution of massive stars and then discuss the range of possible outcomes. I will discuss current model outcomes and recent insights we have learned from detailed studies. Finally, I will discuss implications for binary stars and the impact on gravitational wave sources.

The detections of fullerenes and (possibly) planar C24 (a small fragment of a graphene sheet) in the H-rich circumstellar environments of evolved stars show that formation of these complex species does not require an H-poor environment contrary to general expectation. This together with the very recent identification of the fullerene cation C 60+ as a diffuse interstellar band (DIB) carrier (the only DIB carrier known to date) reinforce the idea that these molecular nanostructures are ubiquitous in space. The understanding of the formation route of these complex organic species requires an interdisciplinary research, crossing the boundaries between astronomers, chemists, and physicists, with potential applications in nanotechnology and industry. Here, I review the main results of the interdisciplinary approach carried out at the IAC in order to learn about complex molecular nanostructures in evolved stars. In particular the spatial distribution of C60 in the planetary nebula IC 418. Finally, I underline the main open questions and future directions like the expected observations on these complex organics in evolved stars from future facilities such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Planet formation takes place inside disks of gas and dust around young stars --- protoplanetary disks (PPDs). While the dust component only makes up about one per cent of the total disk mass, it underpins planet formation from both theoretical and observational perspectives. In this talk, I describe our recent work on dust dynamics in PPDs. I will present a simplified framework to model the complex dynamics of dust-gas interaction, by drawing on an analogy between dusty-gas and pure gas dynamics. I then demonstrate several applications of this new approach, including a new analytical understanding of the `streaming instability' for planetesimal formation; numerical simulations of dust-settling in turbulent PPDs; and the interaction between low mass protoplanets and dusty disks. Implications for planet formation and future work will be discussed.

Dark Matter Substructures are interesting since they can reveal the properties of dark matter, especially the cold dark matter small-scale problems such as missing satellites problem. In recent years, it has become possible to detect individual dark matter subhalos near images of strongly lensed extended background galaxies. In this talk, I would discuss the possibility of using deep neural networks to detect dark matter subhalos, and showing some preliminary result with simulated data.

The center of our galaxy hosts a super massive black hole, four millions times the mass of our own Sun. How did it came to be, and how does it influence our galaxy? Millions of stars orbit around it. What is their fate? Some explode dramatically when they get too close to the black hole, some get ejected from the galaxy at tremendous velocities and some get swallowed by the black hole. We discuss these processes, their rates at the galactic center and other galaxies and their connection with future detection of low frequency gravitational waves.

On October 19 2017, the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii discovered an unusual fast moving object. Given the name 'Oumuamua, the object was traveling on a hyperbolic orbit, which meant the object was not gravitationally bound to the Sun, but came from another planetary system. The object soon returned to interstellar space after its brief visit. This talk will describe what is remarkable (and unremarkable) about the object.

Protoplanetary disk population shows a large diversity of physical structure. This diversity could be driven by the different initial conditions of disk formation. While Keplerian disks are typically found in older embedded protostellar systems, it is still unclear when and how they form. ALMA has started to open a window to study these disks in detail. I will present studies that unravel the physical conditions of these young disks and methods to test disk formation models.

In this talk, I’ll introduce our recent work on the model frame work of the incomplete conditional stellar mass function (ICSMF) for the incomplete galaxy samples. By incorporating the completeness information in the halo model, we are able to simultaneously constrain the sample completeness and stellar-halo mass relation. In addition, we can recover the intrinsic galaxy stellar mass functions using the incomplete galaxy samples to study the evolution of galaxies. We apply the method to the SDSS-III BOSS luminous red galaxy and SDSS-IV eBOSS emission line galaxy samples.

We introduce the LST project (1, 2) and its key sciences together with the recent discussions in two workshops for the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) project (3) held in Europe. The LST is optimized for wide-area imaging and spectroscopic surveys in the 70-420 GHz frequency range, which spans the main atmospherics at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths for good observing sites such as the ALMA plateau in Chile. We also target observations at higher frequencies up to roughly 1 THz, using an inner high-precision surface. One of the key sciences is CO/[CII] (possibly + [OIII]) tomography, i.e., blind line emitter search, using the imaging spectrograph. With the tomography we aim at addressing key questions in galaxy formation and evolution such as finding first generation galaxies and investigating cosmic star formation history up to the EoR, e.g., z~10. The LST will also contribute to research on wide range of topics in astronomy and astrophysics, e.g., astrochemistry, star formation in our Galaxies and galaxies, the evolution of cluster of galaxies via SZE effect, and submillimeter VLBI observations of e.g., SMBHs. Via the discussions in the AtLAST workshops, the LST and AtLAST working groups tentatively concluded or agreed on that two similar projects, i.e., LST and AtLAST, should be merged, and a killer science of the (~ 50m class) common single-dish telescope is the 3D exploration of the universe at mm/submm wavelengths. Our recent R&D activities for the LST and discussions on the LST for the Master Plan 2020 led by Science Council of Japan (SCJ) will be also reported briefly.

Orion KL is the closest (400 pc) of all the massive star forming regions and allows therefore detailed studies. Despite its closeness, its complexity still calls for interferometric observations in order to separate the different subregions emitting at different velocities, which are otherwise mixed in an inextricable combination of different species at similar apparent frequencies in single dish observations. Orion KL has another peculiarity : it has undergone an explosive event 500 years ago as revealed by H2 and CO maps, and also by the proper motion of three stellar objects, BN, I and n. While our ALMA observations were mostly aimed at detecting the rare isotopologue 16O18O to follow up on our Herschel detection of O2 towards this region (Goldsmith et al. 2011, Chen et al. 2014), we took the advantage of that deep search to observe 16 GHz of spectral band in the 1.3 mm window. We did not detect 16O18O but the quality of our data (a 5-fold improvement compared to the similar data taken during Science Verification 0) allowed us to identify a few species not detected yet in Orion, and study the kinematics of the region in detail. In particular, we report gGg’ ethylene glycol and acetic acid detections in a peculiar place, and we explain the line position and shape of each subregion, both in relation with the 500 years-old explosion. We show that based on this kinematics, we can make a 3D description of the region. The data quality is high enough to also study each species channel-wise. This reveals gas expansions never seen before which are traceable back to the explosion center. These expansions are comparable to time-of-flight experiments in the laboratory and allow therefore to establish the order of evolution between species, from those that are destroyed soon after their sublimation from the ices to those which survive until they get too diluted to be observed. This brings interesting clues to the chemistry of hot regions, and in particular of complex organic molecules (COMs). For example, we think that a route exists to produce ethyl cyanide in the gas phase (as also advocated by Suzuki et al. 2018).

The first stars forged the first metals inside their stellar cores and eventually ejected them to the primordial IGM medium through supernovae explosions. These metals significantly influence the next generation of star formation. Therefore, it is very important to understand how these metals chemically enriched the early universe. In this research, we use two popular codes, ZEUS-MP and FLASH, and modify them to simulate the explosion process of the first supernovae in the minihalos. We find the mixing of SNe ejecta caused by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability due to the explosion energy and halo masses. Our results can help to understand the abundance pattern of some metal-poor stars that are thought to form after the first stars.

In many studies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), their central engine has been assumed to consist of a standard disc onto a supermassive black hole (BH) and a single hot corona located near the BH, emitting optical-UV blackbody and primary X-rays, respectively. However, this is now recognized too simple to explain actual optical, UV, and X-ray spectra and variabilities observed from nearby AGNs. To overcome this problem, we developed a variability-assisted method to decompose an X-ray spectrum into components model-independently, and discovered that the AGN central engine includes multiple X-ray-emitting regions separately formed around a BH (Noda et al. 2011, 2013, 2014). In this presentation, I will introduce these results, and show impacts of our picture to outer structures such as a broad-line region and a dusty torus, touching one of recent hot topics so-called "changing-look AGN" (e.g., Noda & Done 2018). Furthermore, I will show future studies of accretions in AGNs with X-ray microcalorimeter, referring to the leading result of NGC 1275 by the Hitomi satellite (Hitomi collaboration 2018).

Reverberation Mapping (RM) is the primary technique to measure black hole (BH) masses for distant active galactic nuclei (AGN). RM measures BH masses by monitoring the time lags in the variability of fluxes between different parts of the AGN spectra. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project is one of the first large-scale RM programs to simultaneously monitor 849 uniformly-selected AGN over a broad range of luminosity and redshift. I will present results from several projects using the SDSS-RM first year data.

Planets form in gaseous protoplanetary disks surrounding newborn stars. As such, the most direct way to learn how they form from observations, is to directly watch them forming in disks. In the past, this was difficult due to a lack of observational capability, and planet formation was a subject of theoretical research. Now, thanks to a fleet of new instruments with unprecedented resolving power that have come online in the past decade, we have just started to unveil features in resolved images of protoplanetary disks, such as gaps and spiral arms, that are most likely associated with embedded (unseen) planets. By comparing observations with theoretical models of planet-disk interactions, the masses and orbits of these still forming planets may be constrained. Such planets help us directly test various planet formation models. This marks the onset of a new field — observational planet formation. I will introduce the current status of this field, highlight some of the latest developments, and discuss where this field is heading.

In this talk I will discuss recent and ongoing work on reconstructing density fields from cosmological observations. Starting with a toy example to establish the maximum likelihood formalism, I will then apply it to three dimensional intergalactic medium (IGM) interpreted from lyman alpha absorption lines in the spectra of high redshift sources. Unlike standard galaxy redshift surveys which can trace the nearby universe (z<0.2), IGM tomography provides accurate maps at ``Cosmic Noon'' (z~2.0), capturing galaxies at a critical early time in their formation. By utilizing a maximum likelihood approach, I show that it is possible to reconstruct the initial density field of observed regions and potentially provide a new probe of astrophysical processes. Time permitting, I will discuss applying these techniques to galaxy weak lensing surveys where they can be used to optimally extract cosmological information even in the presence of severe instrumental systematics.

Blazars are active galactic nuclei with strong jets. They tend to exhibit dramatic and unpredictable flux variations, namely outbursts.Certain observed outbursts from an exceptional Blazar OJ287 can be explained by invoking a massive black hole binary as its central engine. Detailed General Relativistic modeling allowed us to predict a major optical outburst during November 2015. The outburst did occur within the expected time range, peaking on 5/12/2015. A multi-wavelength observational campaign confirmed the occurrence of certain impact flare and the presence of a major thermal component in the flare, as predicted. These observations and subsequent analysis allowed us to establish the presence of a spinning supermassive black hole binary that spirals in due to the emission of nano-Hertz gravitational waves in the central engine of OJ287. I will briefly list our on-going efforts that should be interesting to the Event Horizon Telescope consortium and the International Pulsar Timing Array.

Recent imaging and spectroscopic surveys have greatly increased the inventory of an elusive class of persistent variables, extreme variability quasars (EVQs), where the quasar can vary by more than a factor of few in flux over multi-year timescales, much more variable than the normal quasar population. In some extreme cases, the quasar almost entirely shuts off, leading to an apparent "type transition" from a type 1 (broad-line) quasar to a typical type 2 (narrow-line) quasar. I will briefly review this topic, and provide arguments that attribute the dramatic flux changes to intrinsic accretion rate changes. However, it remains a challenge to understand this EVQ phenomenon in the standard theory of accretion disks.

Binary supermassive black holes are expected to be common from galaxy mergers. Their final coalescence is believed to be the loudest gravitational wave siren in the universe, yet no confirmed binary is known to be close enough so that it would efficiently emit gravitational waves to merge within the age of the universe. Over the past few years, systematic searches using synoptic surveys based on active galactic nucleus variability have started to yield a sample of intriguing candidates. I will discuss the results from these searches and highlight our recent discovery of potentially the first case of a candidate from circumbinary accretion disk variability from the Dark Energy Survey.