Co-I (Neutron Stars)
I am an assistant professor of Physics and William H. Hurt Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. My research focuses on gravitational wave astrophysics and includes theoretical understanding of General Relativity and analysis of gravitational wave data across the spectrum.
On the neutron star front, I have worked on understanding their observational properties and gravitational wave signatures during binary collisions. With my collaborators we have analyzed gravitational wave data from neutron star mergers with the goal of extracting the properties of the equation of state of supranuclear matter. We have also considered and contrasted information from gravitational wave inference to information from further astrophysical probes as well as terrestrial experiments and nuclear calculations. Going forward, I am interested in exploring the role of crust physics on neutron star observables.
On the black hole front, I have worked on theoretically understanding the relativistic interactions between black hole spins and on exploring the impact of beyond-General Relativity dynamics on black hole mergers. My collaborators and I have produced techniques to analyze gravitational wave data from ground-based detectors and applied them to existing catalogs from black hole mergers to probe the astrophysical and fundamental properties of black holes.
I am looking forward to exploring neutron stars and black holes from a different angle within SCEECS.
Five recent relevant references
GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral. B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 161101
GW170817: Measurements of Neutron Star Radii and Equation of State. B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration). Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 161101
Impact of the PSR J0740+6620 radius constraint on the properties of high-density matter
Isaac Legred, Katerina Chatziioannou, Reed Essick, Sophia Han (韩君), and Philippe Landry
Phys. Rev. D 104, 063003
Curious case of GW200129: Interplay between spin-precession inference and data-quality issues
Ethan Payne, Sophie Hourihane, Jacob Golomb, Rhiannon Udall, Derek Davis, and Katerina Chatziioannou
Phys. Rev. D 106, 104017
Simulating neutron stars with a flexible enthalpy-based equation of state parametrization in SpECTRE
Isaac Legred, Yoonsoo Kim, Nils Deppe, Katerina Chatziioannou, et al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13818