E. Sterl Phinney

Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics

Short short curriculum vitae, recent pubs (adobe pdf, 3 page).

• Office: 316 Cahill
• Admin Asst: JoAnn Boyd, x4280; Grants Manager: Erika Garcia x8610
• Snail: 350-17 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125 USA
• Email: esp{at}tapir{ dot }caltech{ dot }edu
• FAX: 1-626-796-5675

Selected Recent Publications

• A Practical Theorem on Gravitational Wave Backgrounds, E.S. Phinney.
• Birth Kicks as the Origin of Pulsar Rotation, H. Spruit & E.S. Phinney, Nature, 393: 139-141 (1998).
• Stellar Forensics I: Cooling Curves, and Stellar Forensics II: Millisecond Pulsar Binaries, B.M.S. Hansen & E.S. Phinney, M.N.R.A.S. 294: 557 and 569 (1998).
• The Pulsar Kick Velocity Distribution, B.M.S. Hansen & E.S. Phinney, M.N.R.A.S., 291: 569-577 (1997).
• The Fading of Young Stellar Populations and the Luminosity Functions of Dwarf, Irregular, and Starburst Galaxies, D.W. Hogg & E.S. Phinney, Astrophys. J., 488: L95-L99 (1997).
• Constraints on the Extragalactic Background Light from Gamma-ray Observations of High Redshift Quasars, P. Madau & E.S. Phinney, Astrophys. J., 456: 124-131 (1996).
• Tidal Circularization and the Eccentricity of Binaries Containing Giant Stars, F. Verbunt & E.S. Phinney, Astron. Astrophys., 296: 709-721 (1995).
• Binary and Millisecond Pulsars, E.S. Phinney & S.R. Kulkarni, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 32: 591-639 (1994).
• Mass-Transfer Induced Activity in Galaxies: An Introduction, E.S. Phinney in Mass-Transfer Induced Activity in Galaxies, ed. I. Shlosman (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Pr.), 1-22 (1994).
• Binary-Single Star Interactions in Globular Clusters, S. Sigurdsson & E.S. Phinney, Astrophys. J., 415: 631-651 (1993).
• Pulsars as Probes of Newtonian Dynamical Systems, E.S. Phinney, Phil Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. A, 341: 39-75 (1992).
• The Rate of Neutron Star Binary Mergers in the Universe: Minimal Predictions for Gravity Wave Detectors, E.S. Phinney, Astrophys. J. Lett., 380: L17-L21 (1991).

Research Interests

• The origin of relativistic jets from accreting black holes
  • Magnetohydrodynamic extraction of energy from rotating (Kerr) black holes
  • Pair creation and radiation drag in relativistic jets
  • Propagation and slowing of jets
• Structure of accretion disks
  • Dynamics, heating and cooling of warped disks
  • Evolution of disks formed by impulsively events -the formation of planets around PSR 1257+12
  • Super-Eddington accretion onto neutron stars
• Properties of dense matter in very high magnetic fields
• Formation and properties of recycled binary pulsars
  • Coupling of orbital motion to stellar convection and cycles in X-ray binaries. Residual eccentricities of pulsar binaries. Anomalous period derivatives.
  • Evolution of X-ray binaries. Core mass-period relation of binary pulsars. Birthrate problem.
  • Plasma physics of eclipse mechanisms in eclipsing pulsars.
  • Magnetospheric physics of millisecond pulsars. Wind properties, death valley.
  • Cooling of white dwarf companions to pulsars. Age determination.
  • Effects of pulsars and X-ray sources on their companion stars.
• Pulsars in globular clusters
  • Dynamics of binary stars in globular clusters. Companion exchange and hardening. Tidal encounters.
  • Evolution of binary populations in globular clusters
  • Pulsar timing in globular clusters: mean field acceleration and local jerk. Determination of properties of cluster cores, mass segregation, IMF.
  • Plasma probes of ICM.
• Star formation in dense environments
  • Dense star clusters, multiple star evolution
  • Galactic nuclei
  • Stellar collisions in the Galactic nucleus
• The intergalactic medium and radiation fields
  • UV opacity of the universe
  • Structure and correlations of intergalactic hydrogen clouds
  • Propagation of gamma-rays at high redshifts -pair opacity and the evolution of the UV-optical background
  • Measurement and origin of the primordial intergalactic magnetic field
• I chaired the US LISA Mission Definition Team from its creation in 1997 until 2001, when LISA was funded and entered project phase in both NASA and ESA. From 2001, when the US Mission Definition and the European LISA teams were merged into a single `LISA International Science Team' (the LIST), until 2011, when the financial disaster called JWST caused NASA to terminate its involvement with LISA, I served as US chair of the LISA Sources and Data Analysis Working Group. LISA is the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, for gravitational wave astronomy. LISA operates at much lower frequencies than ground-based detectors like LIGO, and there is no overlap in the sources expected. The signals from supermassive black holes throughout the universe (to redshift 100!) and thousands of compact binaries throughout the Galaxy will form a suite of constantly changing tones, the gravitational-wave symphony of the universe. LISA's goal is to record this symphony in glorious high-fi. For details see my summary of science goals, and drivers an image of the LISA sky, some images and audio snips of tiny bits of waveforms from one of the most interesting LISA sources: compact objects captured onto orbits plunging near massive black holes in galactic nuclei, and the glossy official LISA web site at JPL. Sources of LISA graphics. My animations of waves, and interferometer reactions, from orbiting binaries at inclinations: i=0 and i=80. News flashes: LISA is now in the NASA OSS Strategic Plan (Nov 1999) for launch 2009-2010. LISA is recommended by the NAS/NRC panel on Gravitational Physics (Dec 1999). LISA is top new moderate initiative for NASA recommended by the NAS/NRC decadal survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics (May 2000). The European Space Agency's SSAC recommends LISA be funded jointly with NASA, for launch 2008-2012. ESA's Science Programme Committee unamimously endorses LISA as a Cornerstone at F-class cost in collaboration with NASA, for launch 2008-2013 (Oct 2000). ESA funds 2006 launch of LISA test package as SMART-2 (Feb 2001); Invitation to Tender out. NASA $62M participation in LISA Disturbance Reduction System test in SMART-2 through ST-7 approved in March 2002. (Feb 2003): LISA in the President's 2004 budget request.
• I chaired NASA's 2003-2028 SEU Roadmap Team, and led the development of NASA's Beyond Einstein program, which at last got LISA (and several other missions) into the President's budget (Feb 2003). I chaired the Astronomy and Astrophysics panel of the NAS/National Research Council's Nuclear Systems Study (2004), and from 2005-2008 was a member of the congressionally chartered Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC). I led a NASA study of my proposed follow-on to LISA, the Big Bang Observer (2004-5).

Graduate Students Click on name to see current place of employment, paper icon for (incomplete) publications.

Former:

Prof. M. Coleman Miller [PhD 1990] , Prof. Steinn Sigurdsson [PhD 1991] , Lin Zuo [PhD 1991] , Prof. Maurice H.P.M. van Putten [PhD 1992] book, Prof. Alice C. Quillen [PhD 1993] , Prof. Bradley M.S. Hansen [PhD 1996] , Prof. Sanjoy Mahajan [PhD 1998] books, Michael Hartl [PhD 2003] books, J. Nate Bode [PhD 2011] , Christopher Wegg [PhD 2012] , Io Kleiser [PhD 2018], Prof. Elena Murchikova [PhD 2018] , (co-advisor) Prof. Anna Y. Ho [PhD 2020]

Current:

Recent SURFs

Adam Jermyn (2014, CIT), Hyerin Cho (2018, GIST), Tzarina Shippee (2019, CIT), Gauri Batra (2020, Cornell).

Senior Thesis

Former:

Adam Jermyn (won 2015 APS Apker Prize for this thesis)

Postdoctoral Fellows

Former:

Prof. Andrzej Zdziarski , Prof. Isaac Shlosman , Prof. G. Mark Voit , Prof. Ari Laor , Prof. Dong Lai , Prof. Andrew Melatos , Prof. Eric Blackman , Prof. Scott Hughes , Guillaume Dubus , Greg Ushomirsky , Marc Freitag Prof. Jonathan Gair , Michael Hartl , Prof. Naoki Seto , Prof. Yasushi Mino , Prof. Milos Milosavljevic , Etienne Racine , Prof. Michael Kesden , Prof. Kumiko Kotera , Drew Clausen , Prof. Jim Fuller , Jono Squire , Prof. Clement Bonnerot , Adithan Kathirgamaraju, Prof. Wenbin Lu , Prof. Paz Beniamini , Dongzi Li, Prof. Ilaria Caiazzo , Prof. Abigail Polin,

Current:

Courses taught

Current:

• Astronomy 102 Radiative Processes -2025 Course Materials
• E100, Section 2 Crude Experiments Description.

Previous:

• ACM 95b/100b Introductory Methods of Applied Mathematics (ODEs, special functions, Fourier and Laplace transforms) -Course Materials and Notes
• Physics 1b Special Relativity and Electromagnetism
• Physics 1c Electromagnetism
• Physics 101=103b Order of Magnitude Physics -2023 Course Materials and Notes -1989,1991,1993,1995,1997 Course Materials and Notes
• Physics 106a Topics in Classical Physics -Mechanics I -Course Materials
• Physics 106b Topics in Classical Physics -Mechanics II -Course Materials
• Physics 136a Applications of Classical Physics (tensors, transport, statistical physics, random processes, wave propagation, optics) -2020 Course Materials
• Physics 136b Applications of Classical Physics (hydrodynamics, MHD, plasma physics) -2019 Course Materials
• Physics 236abc General Relativity
• Astronomy 20 Basic Astronomy and the Galaxy- Course Materials and Notes
• Astronomy 21 Galaxies and Cosmology-Course Materials
• Astronomy 102 Physics of the Interstellar Medium -1996 CLUE review, 1997, 2023 Course Materials and Notes
• Astronomy/Physics 104 Relativistic Astrophysics Course Materials
• Astronomy 121 Radiative Processes -2023 Course Materials
• Astronomy 123 Structure and Evolution of Interacting Binary Stars -Course Materials
• Astronomy 124 Structure and Dynamics of Galaxies - 1995 CLUE review, Course Materials and Notes
• Astronomy 125 High-Energy Astrophysics -Course Materials and Notes
• Astronomy 126 Physics of the Interstellar Medium Course Materials
• Astronomy 127 Cosmology and Galaxy Formation -Course Materials
• Astronomy 141abc Research Conference in Astronomy -Course Materials
• Astronomy 215 Star Formation -Course Materials
• Astronomy 215 Disks and Accretion -Course Materials
• Astronomy 215 Astronomical Transients -Course Materials
• Astronomy 215 Compact Binaries -Course Materials
• Astronomy 218 Physics of Accretion and Active Galactic Nuclei
• Astronomy 218 Theory of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Astronomy 218 Gamma-Ray Astronomy Course Materials

*Theoretical Astrophysics incl. Relativity group at Caltech

esp{at}tapir.caltech.edu

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