Research Homepage of Christian D. Ott
Welcome!
I am a computational/theoretical astrophysicist in TAPIR at Caltech working at
the interface of numerical relativity, nuclear/neutrino astrophysics,
and gravitational-wave physics. My current primary research interest
is to find ways to blow up massive stars, that is, make core-collapse
supernovae and gamma-ray bursts and their compact remnants, black
holes and neutron stars. This work is carried out as part of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes
(SXS) collaboration and we also work closely with the Einstein Toolkit team.
Another line of my research is
concerned with the observation and interpretation of gravitational
waves using the LIGO
interferometers and I am a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
I am presently an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and am leading
an NSF CAREER project in Gravitational Physics.
I received my PhD in 2007 at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational
Physics under Bernard Schutz's and Ed Seidel's supervision and then
was a Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics postdoctoral fellow with
Adam Burrows at The University of Arizona before joining Caltech.
More details can be found in my CV.
Follow me on Twitter: Follow @hypercott
Read my blog: Blowing Up Stars
My current team at TAPIR:
| Undergrads | Hannah Klion, Anthony Alvarez |
| Grad students | Sarah Gossan, Sherwood Richers (DOE Comp. Sci. Grad Fellow), Io Kleiser, Jonas Lippuner, Jeff Kaplan, Casey Handmer, John Wendell, Kevin Barkett, Jon Blackman |
| Postdocs | Ernazar Abdikamalov, Roland Haas (NSERC fellow), Philipp Mösta, Tony Piro, Christian Reisswig (Einstein Fellow), Luke Roberts (DuBridge Fellow), Nick Taylor, Anil Zenginoglu |
| Senior Researchers | Mark Scheel, Béla Szilágyi |
| Visitors | Jocelyn Read, Geoffrey Lovelace, Uli Sperhake and Steve Drasco (visualization) |
| Admins | JoAnn Boyd, Shirley Hampton |
The SXS collaboration is supported by NSF, NASA, DOE, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation.
Research Opportunities
| Senior Thesis: | If you are a Caltech undergrad and interested in doing a senior thesis in Ay or Ph, please come see me! I am happy to advise senior thesis work and have a number of interesting projects available. |
| Prospective Summer Undergrads: | We work with the LIGO REU program. Please see the projects and application procedures listed there. Caltech undergrads should contact me directly about SURF possibilities. |
| Prospective Grad Students: | My group has a long list of projects suitable for starting grad students. If you are
interested in the stuff we do and would like to apply to the Caltech
Astrophysics and/or the Caltech Physics graduate programs, feel free
to contact me to discuss potential research projects. Please do not
send me your application materials -- these should go to the graduate
program. The admission decision will be made by the graduate admission
committees. My group is actively trying to increase the representation of women and minorities in theoretical physics and astrophysics. We thus especially encourage women and minorities to apply. |
Teaching Info
2013 Spring term:
2012/13 Fall term. Ay121 - Radiative Processes (with Gregg Hallinan). 2012 Spring term. Ay125 -- High-Energy Astrophysics (with Alan Weinstein). 2010/2011 Winter term. Ay190 -- Computational Astrophysics 2011/2012 Fall term. FS 001 -- Freshman Seminar on Cosmic Explosions and Their Multi-Messenger Signals
2009/2010 Winter term: Ay 215 -- Seminar in Theoretical
Astrophysics: Interacting Binaries.
|
Snapshot from a 3D GR black hole formation simulation (Ott et al. 2011, PRL) |
New Stuff (in quasi-chronological order)
- 2013/02/12 Announcing the Caltech Gravitational Wave Astrophysics School (CGWAS 2013)
CGWAS 2013 is a summer school for senior undergraduates and graduate students interested in the astrophysics of gravitational wave sources, gravitational wave astronomy, and multi-messenger follow-up observations of gravitational wave detections in the Advanced LIGO/Virgo era.
CGWAS will take place July 22-26, 2013 on the Caltech campus. Attendance is free, but limited. Support for accomodation in Caltech campus housing is available. Apply at http://www.cgwas.org.
CGWAS is supported by my NSF CAREER award and is part of my CAREER education/outreach program.
- 2012/10/24 Our first full 3D Core-Collapse Supernova Paper is out!
arXiv:1210.6674:
General-Relativistic Simulations of Three-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernovae
We ran four full 3D full GR (time-evolving Einstein's field equations) simulations of a 27-solar-mass progenitor star that was shown by Müller et al. to be especially susceptible to the Standing Accretion Shock Instability (SASI) in axisymmetry.
Our goal was to see (1) if the SASI develops in a similar way even in 3D (where the dynamics is not forced to be symmetric about one of the axes) and (2) how the behavior of the SASI changes when the strength of neutrino heating is varied.
We found that the SASI, while present in 3D, never reaches the strength seen in the 2D simulations of Müller et al. In our simulations, neutrino-driven convection was seeded early on and grew to become the dominant instability. We also found that as the explosion developed, the shock front became strongly distorted, showing large scale asymmetry and many small-scale protrusions, as can be seen in the volume rendering of the specific entropy distribution shown on the right.
- 2012/07/01 As of today, our group member Christian Reisswig is a NASA Einstein Fellow. Christian will continue to work with us at Caltech for the next three years.
- 2012/06/26 I was invited to participate in the NSF CyberBridges workshop (funded by the Office of Cyberinfrastructure) in Arlington, VA, June 25/26, 2012. This was a great workshop bringing together (1) NSF CAREER recipients in computational science from a broad range of backgrounds, (2) international leaders in computational science, and (3) NSF program directors. I learned a lot and met many interesting people. I also learned about figshare and uploaded the poster that I presented.
- 2012/06/09 Invited plenary talk at Neutrino 2012 in Kyoto -- my biggest audience yet: 600 particle (astro-)physicists! A copy of my presentation is available for download.
- 2012/05/22 The Caltech Supernova Group produces its first PhD: Congratulations Dr. Evan O'Connor!
Evan will join the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto as a postdoctoral fellow this fall.
- 2012/05/11 The American Physical Society Topical Group in Gravitation (GGR) executive committee election results are out: I am now a Member at Large of GGR and will serve on the executive committee for the next three years!
- 2012/02/15 I was named a 2012-2014 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. (Announcement).
- 2012/01/19 My postdoc Christian Reisswig has been announced of one of the 2012 Einstein Fellowship recipients!! Congratulations, Christian!
- 2012/01/10 My NSF CAREER proposal in Gravitational Physics will be funded!
- 2011/06/20-24 Microphysics in Computational Relativistic Astrophysics 2011 (MICRA 2011) workshop at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. This is the second MICRA (the first one was in 2009 at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark) that I co-organized and I think it was another great success. Slides are available at micra2011.org.
- 2010/07/06 -- invited talk at GR19 in Mexico City on some brand new results on the formation of stellar mass black holes. Slides are available here.
- I was on TV!!! I participated in episode 2 Black Holes of the Discovery Science Channel show Through the Wormhole (hosted by Morgan Freeman!). Check out the show on YouTube!
Older News
Some Current Projects and Collaborations
- My team at Caltech, which is part of the Simualting eXtreme Spacetimes collaboration, is working on full 3D simulations of core-collapse supernovae with the ultimate goal of connecting precollapse conditions to the various possible outcomes of stellar collapse and their multi-messenger (photons, neutrinos, gravitational waves) signatures.
- I am a member of the Einstein Toolkit that aims to provide well tested and documented open-source simulation codes to the numerical relativity and astrophysics modeling community. The Einstein Toolkit is currently funded by a collaborative NSF grant to LSU, RIT, Georgia Tech, and Caltech.
- I very strongly believe in open source and strive to make my simulation codes and input physics publically available. Most of my 3D supernova simulation tools are already public and part of the Einstein Toolkit . My grad student Evan O'Connor's code GR1D (see the GR1D code paper) is also available as open source from our stellarcollapse.org website. There we also host finite-temperature nuclear equation of state tables and table reader/interpolation code.
- I am an active member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Burst Data Analysis working group and am presently involved in a search for gravitational waves from core-collapse supernovae. I am also trying to understand how combined neutrino and gravitational wave observations from the next galactic core-collapse supernova may be used to constrain supernova physics and fundamental physics. My direct local collaborator on this is my grad student Sarah Gossan.
- With the Caltech-Cornell-CITA-WSU Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration I am studying the merger of neutron star - neutron star and black hole - neutron star binaries. This research is primarily funded by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, NSF, and NASA. My direct collaborators are my graduate student Jeff Kaplan, Matt Duez at WSU, Larry Kidder, Francois Foucart and Saul Teukolsky at Cornell, Mark Scheel and Bela Szilagyi at Caltech.
- I work with the Princeton supernova group (led by Adam Burrows) on various topics in core-collapse supernova theory. The current focus is 1D and multi-D neutrino transport using Monte Carlo techniques.
Publications
(Complete ADS list), (ADS short-author list only [no LIGO papers]),Recent Short Author List Work:
- C. Reisswig, R. Haas, C. D. Ott, E. Abdikamalov, P. Moesta, D. Pollney, and E. Schnetter, "Three-Dimensional General-Relativistic Hydrodynamic Simulations of Binary Neutron Star Coalescence and Stellar Collapse with Multipatch Grids," submitted to Phys. Rev. D. (2012), (ads/arXiv)
- C. D. Ott, E. Abdkimalov, P. Moesta, R. Haas, S. Drasco, E. O'Connor, C. Reisswig, C. Meakin, and E. Schnetter, "General-Relativistic Simulations of Three-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernovae," submitted to ApJ (2012), (ads/arXiv).
- O. Korobkin, E. Abdikamalov, N. Stergioulas, E. Schnetter, B. Zink, S. Rosswog, and C. D. Ott, "The runaway instability in general-relativistic accretion disks," submitted to MNRAS (2012), (ads/arXiv).
- C. Horowitz, G. Shen, E. O'Connor, and C. D. Ott, "Charged current neutrino interactions in core-collapse supernovae in a virial expansion," to appear in Phys. Rev. C. (2012), ((ads/arXiv)).
- D. Radice, E. Abdikamalov, L. Rezzolla, and C. D. Ott, "A New Spherical Harmonics Scheme for Multi-Dimensional Radiation Transport I: Static Matter Configurations," submitted to J. Comp. Phys., (ads/arXiv).
- E. O'Connor and C. D. Ott, "The Progenitor Dependence of the Preexplosion Neutrino Emission in Core-Collapse Supernovae," to appear in ApJ (2013), (ads/arXiv).
- C. D. Ott, E. Abdikamalov, E. O'Connor, C. Reisswig, R. Haas, P. Kalmus, S. Drasco, A. Burrows, and E. Schnetter, "Correlated Gravitational Wave and Neutrino Signals from General-Relativistic Rapidly Rotating Iron Core Collapse," Phys. Rev. D. 86, 024026 (2012), (ads).
- E. Abdikamalov, A. Burrows, C. D. Ott, F. Loeffler, E. O'Connor, J. Dolence, E. Schnetter, "A New Monte Carlo Method for Time-Dependent Neutrino Radiation Transport," ApJ 755, 111 (2012), (ads).
- L. Dessart, E. O'Connor, C. D. Ott, "The Arduous Journey to Black-Hole Formation in Potential Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitors,", ApJ 754, 76 (2012), (ads)
- J. Logue, C. D. Ott, I. S. Heng, P. Kalmus, J. Scargill, "Inferring Core-Collapse Supernova Physics with Gravitational Waves," Phys. Rev. D. 86, 044023 (2012), (ads).
- B. Dasgupta, E. O'Connor, C. D. Ott, "Role of collective neutrino flavor oscillations in core-collapse supernova shock revival," Phys. Rev. D. 84, 065008 (2012), (ads).
- A. Piro, C. D. Ott, "Supernova Fallback onto Magnetars and Propeller-powered Supernovae,", Astrophys. J. 736, 108 (2011), (ads).
- E. Thrane, S. Kandhasamy, C. D. Ott, et al., "Long gravitational-wave transients and associated detection strategies for a network of terrestrial interferometers,", Phys. Rev. D. 83, 083004 (2011), (ads).
- C. D. Ott, C. Reisswig, E. Schnetter, E. O'Connor, U. Sperhake, F. Löller, P. Diener, E. Abdikamalov, I. Hawke, and A. Burrows, "Dynamics and Gravitational Wave Signature of Collapsar Formation,", Phys. Rev. Lett 106, 161103 (2011), (ads)
- C. Reisswig, C. D. Ott, U. Sperhake, and E. Schnetter, "Gravitational wave extraction in simulations of rotating stellar core collapse,", Phys. Rev. D. 83, 064008 (2011), (ads)
- E. O'Connor and C. D. Ott, "Black Hole Formation in Failing Core-Collapse Supernovae," ApJ 730, 70 (2011), (ads)
- T. Brandt, A. Burrows, E. Livne, C. D. Ott, "Results From Core-Collapse Simulations with Multi-Dimensional, Multi-Angle Neutrino Transport,", ApJ 728, 8 (2011), (ads)
- J. Nordhaus, T. Brandt, A. Burrows, E. Livne, and C. D. Ott, "Theoretical Support for the Hydrodynamic Mechanism of Pulsar Kicks," accepted for publication in PRD, 2010, (ads)
- F. Peng and C. D. Ott, "Helium Ignition on Accreting Neutron Stars with a New Triple-alpha Reaction Rate," ApJ 725, 309, 2010, (ads)
- E. O'Connor and C. D. Ott, "A New Open-Source Code for Spherically-Symmetric Stellar Collapse to Neutron Stars and Black Holes," Class. Quant. Grav. 27, 114103, 2010, (ads)
- M. Duez, F. Foucart, L. Kidder, C. D. Ott, and S. Teukolsky, "Equation of State Effects in Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers," Class. Quant. Grav. 27, 114106, 2010, (ads).
- I. Leonor, L. Cadonati, E. Coccia, S. D'Antonio, A. Di. Credico, V. Fafone, R. Frey, W. Fulgione, E. Katsavounidis, C. D. Ott, G. Pagliaroli, K. Scholberg, E. Thrane, F. Vissani, "Searching for Prompt Signatures of Nearby Core-Collapse Supernovae by a Joint Analysis of Neutrino and Gravitational-Wave data," accepted for publication in Class. Quant. Grav. 27, 084019, 2010, (ads).
- E. Abdikamalov, C. D. Ott, L. Rezzolla, L. Dessart, H. Dimmelmeier, A. Marek, and H.-T. Janka, "Axisymmetric General Relativistic Simulations of the Accretion-Induced Collapse of White Dwarfs," Phys. Rev. D. 81, 044012, 2010, (ads)
- J. Murphy, C. D. Ott, and A. Burrows, "A Model for Gravitational Wave Emission from Neutrino-Driven Core-Collapse Supernovae", ApJ 707, 1173, 2009, (ads)
- C. D. Ott, "Probing the Core-Collapse Supernova Mechanism with Gravitational Waves ". Class. Quant. Grav. 26, 204015, 2009 (ads)
- C. D. Ott, "The Gravitational Wave Signature of Core-Collapse Supernovae," topical review, Class. Quant. Grav. 26, 063001, 2009, (ads)
- L. Dessart, C. D. Ott, A. Burrows, and E. Livne, "Neutrino signatures and the neutrino-driven wind in Binary Neutron Star Mergers,", accepted for publication in ApJ, (ads)
- H. Dimmelmeier, C. D. Ott, A. Marek, and H.-T. Janka, "The Gravitational Wave Burst Signal from Core Collapse of Rotating Stars," Phys. Rev. D 78, 065056, 2008(ads)
- C. D. Ott, A. Burrows, L. Dessart, and E. Livne, "2D Multi-Angle, Multi-Group Neutrino Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations of Postbounce Supernova Cores," ApJ 685, 1069, 2008. (ads)
- T. Z. Summerscales, A. Burrows, C. D. Ott, and L. S. Finn, "Maximum Entropy for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis: Inferring the Physical Parameters of Core-Collapse Supernovae," ApJ 678, 1142, 2008. (ads)
- L. Dessart, A. Burrows, E. Livne, and C. D. Ott, "The Proto-Neutron Star Phase of the Collapsar Model and the Route to Long-Soft Gamma-Ray Bursts and Hypernovae," ApJ L673, 585, 2008 (ads)
- L. Dessart, A. Burrows, C. D. Ott, and E. Livne, "Magnetically-driven explosions of rapidly-rotating white dwarfs following Accretion-Induced Collapse," ApJ 669, 585, 2007 (ads)
- C. D. Ott, H. Dimmelmeier, A. Marek, H.-T. Janka, I. Hawke, B. Zink, and E. Schnetter, "3D Collapse of Rotating Stellar Iron Cores in General Relativity Including Deleptonization and a Nuclear Equation of State," PRL 98, 261101, 2007. (ads)
- A. Burrows, E. Livne, L. Dessart, C. D. Ott, and J. Murphy, "Simulations of Magnetically-Driven Supernova and Hypernova Explosions in the Context of Rapid Rotation," ApJ 664, 416, 2007. (ads)
- H. Dimmelmeier, C. D. Ott, A. Marek, H.-T. Janka, and E. Müller, "Gravitational-Wave Signals from the Collapse of Rotating Stellar Cores," PRL 98, 251101, 2007. (ads)
- C. D. Ott, H. Dimmelmeier, A. Marek, H.-T. Janka, I. Hawke, B. Zink, and E. Schnetter, "Rotating Collapse of Stellar Iron Cores in General Relativity," refereed proceedings of the New Frontiers in Numerical Relativity Conference, Albert-Einstein-Institut, Potsdam. CQG 24, S139, 2007. (ads)
- B. Zink, N. Stergioulas, I. Hawke, C. D. Ott, E. Schnetter, E. Müller, "Non-axisymmetric instability and fragmentation of general relativistic quasi-toroidal stars," PRD 76, 204019, 2007. (ads)
- A. Burrows, E. Livne, L. Dessart, C. D. Ott, and J. Murphy, "Features of the Acoustic Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernova Explosions," ApJ 655, 416, 2007. (ads)
- C. D. Ott, A. Burrows, L. Dessart, and E. Livne, "A New Mechanism for the Gravitational Wave Emission in Core-Collapse Supernovae," PRL 96, 201102, 2006. (ads)
- A. Burrows, E. Livne, L. Dessart, C. D. Ott, and J. Murphy, "A New Mechanism for Core-Collapse Supernova Explosions,", ApJ 640, 878, 2006. (ads)
- L. Dessart, A. Burrows, E. Livne, and C. D. Ott, "Multi-Dimensional Radiation/Hydrodynamic Simulations of Protoneutron Star Convection," ApJ 645, 534, 2006. (ads)
- C. D. Ott, A. Burrows, T. Thompson, E. Livne, and R. Walder, "The Spin Periods and Rotational Profiles of Neutron Stars at Birth," ApJS 164, 130, 2006. (ads)
- L. Dessart, A. Burrows, C. D. Ott, and E. Livne, "Multi-Dimensional Simulations of the Accretion-Induced Collapse of White Dwarfs to Neutron Stars," ApJ 644, 1063, 2006 (ads)
- B. Zink, N. Stergioulas, I. Hawke, C. D. Ott, E. Schnetter, E. Müller, "Black hole formation through fragmentation of toroidal polytropes", PRL 96, 161101, 2006. (ads)
- R. Walder, A. Burrows, C. D. Ott, E. Livne, M. Jarrah, "Anisotropies in the Neutrino Fluxes and Heating Profiles in Two-dimensional, Time-dependent, Multi-group Radiation Hydrodynamics Simulations of Rotating Core-Collapse Supernovae," ApJ 626, 317, 2005. (ads)
- C. D. Ott, S. Ou, J. E. Tohline, A. Burrows, "One-armed Spiral Instability in a Slowly Rotating, Post-Bounce Supernova Core", ApJ 625, L119, 2005. (ads)
- C. D. Ott, A. Burrows, E. Livne, and R. Walder, "Gravitational Waves from Axisymmetric, Rotational Stellar Core Collapse," ApJ 600, 834, 2004. (ads)
