Theoretical AstroPhysics Including Relativity and Cosmology

Theoretical Astrophysics and Relativity Seminars AY 2025-2026

Organizers	Emails end @caltech.edu
High Energy Astrophysics	Compact Objects and Plasma Astrophysics	Galaxy Formation and Evolution	Gravitational Waves
Xiaoshan Huang xshuang	Yici Zhong yczhong	Nondh Panithanpaisal nondh	Lisa Drummond lisadrum

Seminars will be Hybrid: 370 Cahill & ZOOM
on Fridays at 2:00pm, unless otherwise noted in red

Fall Term Winter Term Spring Term Summer

Fall Term 2025
Date	Speaker (Affiliation)	Title	Organizer
September 26	Xihui Zhao IAS & Tsinghua Univ	Cosmic Ray Magnetohydrodynamics: A New Two-Moment Framework with Numerical Implementation	Haiyang Wang
October 3
October 10	Minghao Guo Princeton Univ	Accretion and Feedback from Galaxies to Event Horizons	Zhong
October 17	Roberto Tejada Arevalo Princeton	The Evolution of Gas Giant Planets	Fuentes
October 24	Hyerin Cho CfA, Harvard	Bridging Scales in Black Hole Accretion and Feedback: Relativistic Jet linking the Horizon to the Host Galaxy	Zhong
October 31	Luca Reali Johns Hopkins Univ	Towards Next-Generation Gravitational-Wave Detectors: Intermediate-Mass Black Holes and Stochastic Backgrounds	Drummond
November 7	Abinaya Rajamuthukumar MPA-Garching	The role of triple evolution in shaping Galactic binaries and transients	Fuller/Scherbak
November 14	Zeyuan Xuan UCLA	From Gravitational Wave Bursts to Binary Dynamics: Unlocking the Astrophysics of Eccentric Sources	Drummond
November 21	Yixian Chen Princeton Univ	Star formation and evolution in AGN disks - general applications of planet formation across cosmic scales	Zhong/Huang
November 28		NO SEMINAR -- Thanksgiving Holiday November 27-28
December 5	Soham Mandal Univ of Virginia	Stellar forensics: tracing the origin of interaction-powered supernovae and Type-Ia supernova remnants	Huang
December 11 Thursday	Mudit Garg New York University	Decoding the sub-parsec scale environment of LISA Massive Black Hole Binaries	Zhong
December 12	Shri Kulkarni Caltech	Metastable helium in the upper thermosphere	Drummond
WINTER RECESS: Dec 12 - Jan 4

Winter Term 2026
Date	Speaker (Affiliation)	Title	Organizer
January 9
January 16
January 22 Thursday	Tatsuya Daniel McGill University	Modified Theories of Gravity, Parity, and the Dark Sector	Drummond
January 23	Aasim Jan Univ of Texas, Austin	Waveform Systematics Across the Gravitational-Wave Spectrum: From LIGO to LISA	Drummond
January 30
February 6	Catherine Blume Univ of Colorado, Boulder	An introduction to solar inertial waves	Fuentes
February 13
February 20
February 27
March 6	Noam Soker Technion	THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELED	Glanz
March 13	Hector Iglesias UT Austin	Hybridization of WaSABI-C inspirals with numerical relativity waveforms for quasi-circular, spin-aligned, asymmetric black hole binaries	Drummond
SPRING RECESS: March 19 - March 29

Spring Term 2026
Date	Speaker (Affiliation)	Title	Organizer
April 3	Adrian Ka-Wai Chung University of Cambridge	Black-hole METRICS, ringdown and fundamental physics	Drummond
April 9 Thursday	Ethan Taylor University of Surrey, UK	The emergence of globular clusters and globular-cluster-like dwarfs at the EDGE of galaxy formation	Panithanpaisal
April 10	Alejandro Cárdenas-Avendaño Wake Forest University	Trapping in Strong Gravity: From Black Hole Images to Gravitational Turbulence	Drummond
April 17	Matias Castro-Tapia McGill University	Crystallization, Convection, and Magnetism in White Dwarf Stars	Fuentes
April 24	Tal Adi USC	Gravitational-wave observables beyond timing: astrometry and weak lensing probes	Huang
May 1	Stacy Kim Carnegie Science Obs	EDGE: Constraining dark matter with the smallest dwarf galaxies	Panithanpaisal
May 8	Chiara Anselmo Univ of Milano-Bicocca	Two complementary approaches to gravitational-wave data analysis	Drummond
May 15 VIRTUAL ONLY	Bindesh Tripathi Columbia University	Beyond Parker: The Origin of Cosmic Magnetic Fields	Fuentes
May 22	Semih Tuna Columbia University	Title to be announced	Huang
May 29	Jayana Saes UIUC	Title to be announced	Drummond
June 5	Adrian Fraser Univ Colorado, Boulder	Title to be announced	Fuentes
June 12		NO SEMINAR -- Caltech Commencement

TAPIR SEMINARS WILL RESUME FALL TERM 2027