Opher's Computational
Group for Astrophysics and Space
Plasma Physics
Welcome!
Group members:
Merav Opher
(Faculty)
Rebekka Evans (Ph.D
student)
Aline Vidotto
(Ph.D.student)
Cristiane Loesch de Souza
(Ph.D.student)
Yong Liu (Postdoc)
Our group is focused
on
investigating plasma effects in astrophysics
and space physics.
Other research interests are
shocks such as formed by Coronal Mass
Ejections, disks around young stars, astrophysical jets and MHD
instabilities. We
compare detailed numerical
simualtion with available data: Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)
disturb and propagate in the Heliosphere.
We are interested in
investigating
how CMEs form shocks, how shocks can form
in the lower corona and
how they accelerate particles to GeV energies that can be hazardous
for human exploration
and important for Space Weather. We are using state of the art computer
modeling to probe the basic
physics processes involved,
such as particle acceleration and
magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. Example of our simulations:
Liu et al. 2008a, 2008b
We are studying the effect that magnetic fields have in
the evolution of CMEs.
Liu et al. 2008a
Loesch et al. 2008
We are also
interested in
studying of shocks evolve in the
heliosphere and compare them with shocks formed by the interaction of
the solar system with the interstellar medium. The twin spacecrafts Voyager
1 and 2 are now
probing the most distant frontier of the solar system. Voyager 1 exited
the Termination Shock on December 14, 2004 and now is in the
Heliosheath. Voyager 2 crossed the Termination Shock in August 2007.
We are studing also
how T-Tauri stars interact with the disks around
them. We are interested
primarly how the presence of coronal magnetized
winds affect this
interaction.
Download our recent
papers: Liu et al. ApJ in press 2008
Evans et al. 2008
Loesch et al. 2008
Some examples of our simulations can be seen
below:
Top Ten Science
Stories of 2007, National Geographic
This
group
is
part of the new Space Weather Group at George
Mason
University.
SUPPORT from
NSF CAREER Grant
NASA Guest Investigator Grant
NASA/LWS Grants
NASA Ames
Supercomputer Facilities