Daniel M. Siegel

NASA Einstein Fellow

Columbia University

Research

I am a theoretical physicist and astrophysicist interested in connecting fundamental physics with the cosmos. My research interests cover a broad range of topics including gravitational physics, nuclear astrophysics, neutrinos, high-energy astrophysics, and transient astronomy. Much of my research centers around unraveling the fundamental physics and astrophysics of compact binary mergers involving neutron stars, which are among the prime targets of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors and multi-messenger astronomy. In particular, I study the physical processes that govern the dynamics of neutron star mergers and that give rise to observable electromagnetic radiation and that produce the heavy elements in the universe via rapid neutron capture process (r-process) nucleosynthesis.

I perform fully general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations on supercomputers, including microphysical equations of state, weak interactions, neutrino radiation transport, and nuclear reaction networks for r-process nucleosynthesis, in combination with analytical and semi-analytical modeling. This allows me to obtain self-consistent predictions from first principles that can directly be compared to observational data of the impending era of multi-messenger astronomy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact

Daniel M. Siegel

dsiegel [AT] astro.columbia [DOT] edu

Department of Physics

Center for Theoretical Physics

Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory

Columbia University

916 Pupin Hall

New York, NY 10027, USA