Physics Colloquium: “Hunting for the Biggest Binaries in the Universe”

The Syracuse University Physics Department is pleased to welcome Dr. Jonathan Zrake, Assistant Professor at Clemson University.

Jonathan Zrake is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Clemson University, where his research group works on problems in computational high-energy astrophysics. He obtained a physics major at Rutgers University in 2007, completed his PhD in 2013 under the supervision of Andrew MacFadyen at New York University, and was a Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University from 2013 – 2017 where he worked with Roger Blandford and Tom Abel. He returned to New York City for a second postdoc at Columbia University, working with Andrei Beloborodov as well as Zoltan Haiman, before moving to Clemson in 2020.

“Hunting for the biggest binaries in the universe”

Supermassive black hole pairs are the universe’s largest binaries, formed in the aftermaths of galaxy mergers. These colossal objects, hidden in the cores of massive galaxies, spiral toward each other, emitting gravitational waves that may be detectable by pulsar timing arrays, or by upcoming space-based interferometers including LISA. Dr. Zrake will discuss the search for these elusive systems, and our efforts to predict their electromagnetic signatures with advanced computer simulations.