Research

Research Group Hot Jupiters EKL The First Galaxies SIGOs

My group and I are working on a wide range of dynamics research problems covering topics from cosmology to the dynamics of black holes, stars, and extrasolar planets. During my PhD I studied the formation, evolution and properties of the first generations of galaxies and 21cm fluctuations. In parallel, while still a graduate student, I was intrigued by the theoretical challenges and problems in the dynamics of our solar and extra-solar planetary systems and decided to pursue those as well. This part of my work was further enhanced during my postdoc years where I have studied the dynamical evolution of Hot Jupiters. Most notably I have found a new mechanism that, not only produces Jupiter like planets in a very close proximity to the star, but can also explain the eccentric and even retrograde observed systems. This mechanism, known as the Eccentric Kozai-Lidov (EKL) mechanism, raises many interesting research questions, which are applicable to a diverse range of astrophysical systems at different scales.

The Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: The Eccentric Kozai-Lidov Effect and Its Applications (including Supplemental Material). You can download EKL movies here: High inclination flip and low inclination flip .

My group and I continue to work on the formation of structure in the early Universe. Notably, we recently showed that gas-only structures could naturally form without dark matter in the early Universe, at the presence of the supersonic, relative velocity between the gas and dark matter. We showed that these Supersonically-induced gas objects (SIGOs) might be linked to present-day globular clusters.