Koushik Chatterjee
Affiliated Scientist
I am a theoretical astrophysicist broadly interested in the nature of plasma and magnetic fields in accretion flows and relativistic jets around black holes and neutron stars.I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, working closely with Sasha Philippov, and set to join the University of Toronto as a CITA fellow soon. My expertise lies in using numerical tools, specifically general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and radiative transfer ray-tracing codes, to evolve magnetized fluids in a general relativistic framework and investigate observational signatures of astrophysical phenomena associated with these ultra-compact objects. I have worked on topics such as jet evolution and boundary instabilities, misaligned and extremely magnetized accretion onto black holes, black hole imaging, and more recently, magnetar giant flares, pulsars and accreting neutron stars. I am also a member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, and am deeply involved in efforts to understand the plasma and magnetic field distribution close to the black hole event horizon. I am thrilled to be a part of SCEECS, and engage with world experts to develop a deeper understanding of plasma physics in these extreme environments.