Yesterday, PhD candidate Kirk Barrow submitted his first (!) paper (arXiv), titled "First Light: Exploring the Spectra of High-Redshift Galaxies in the Renaissance Simulations". Correlations between physical and observational properties of the first galaxies are imperative to determine before JWST launches in October 2018. We have examined two of the most massive … Continue Reading ››

A couple of weeks ago, we submitted the method paper (arXiv) on Grackle, a chemistry and cooling library for astrophysical simulations and calculations, for publication.  The paper is led by Britton Smith (now at UC-San Diego), and the code and documentary can be found here.

About a month ago, we submitted a new paper on the build-up of the X-ray radiation background. Here we used the Renaissance Simulations to estimate the number density of high-mass X-ray binaries from the first metal-free (Population III) stars. We found that these binaries produce about 6 eV of energy in the X-rays per … Continue Reading ››

My graduate student, Daegene Koh, submitted his first paper to MNRAS two months ago, titled "Amplification of Magnetic Fields in a Primordial HII Region and Supernova". Late last week, we resubmitted the paper after making revisions after a favorable referee report, and posted it on arXiv today. Here we run a suite of … Continue Reading ››

In the past month, we have submitted two papers on the subject of massive black hole formation and growth. The first was led by John Regan at Durham University, and the second was led by KwangHo Park here at the CRA. In Regan et al. (arXiv), we investigate the process of massive black … Continue Reading ››