For the summer meetings will be held on TUESDAYS at 3PM in Dearborn Observatory Room 23.
Please contact Chris Deloye if you would like to volunteer to present something or suggest a topic for discussion. We can accommodate any format, from short informal talks on recent research results to journal-club style discussions and special seminars by visitors.

July 1, 2008
Group Meeting (3:00PM):

As we discussed last meeting, we are going to keep the summer meetings informal with the only scheduled items being updates from our undergrads on their summer projects.

This upcoming week, the undergrads are each going to provide a brief (5-10 minute) summary of their summer projects. The remainder of the time will be spent discussing whatever topics you bring to the table.

June 24, 2008
Group Meeting (3:00PM):

The agenda for this week is minimal: bring some plots (either hard copy or on a laptop) and come ready to talk about what you have been working on. We will also have a *BRIEF* discussion to set the format for the summer meeting.

June 19, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Jeff Andrews will give an update on his work and we celebrate all the end-of-the-year good news!

This is the last meeting of the spring term.

June 12, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

There will be NO GROUP MEETING this week.

June 5, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Lamya and Stefan will each present some of their work.

May 29, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

In the first half of the meeting Manou will present some of her recent work. The second half of the meeting will be open to everyone (especially dynamics people :)) to discuss their work in progress - Genya and Loren will each bring a few plots to show, and others are encouraged to do the same!

May 22, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Sourav and Tim will give short updates on their work.

May 15, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week's group meeting will continue last week's group discussion/feedback meeting.

May 8, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week's group meeting will be a group discussion/feedback meeting.

May 1, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week's group meeting has been cancelled so that members may attend the scheduled Heilborn Lecture by Steve Chu.

April 24, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM)

Daniel Fabrycky (Harvard CfA)

Title: What Transiting Extrasolar Planets can Teach us about the Dynamics of Planetary Systems [Abstract]

April 17 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week Vicky, Marc, and Manou will describe the highlights from the APS meeting they recently attended, and Ilya will give a quick summary of the news from the PCGM meeting if time permits.

We will also continue the brief 5-min summaries of ongoing ressearch that we started two weeks ago.

April 10, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Ryo Kita will give a practice talk on "Habitability of Planets in Binary Systems". He will be discussing an investigation of how a stellar companion to a planetary system can affect the dynamical evolution of an Earth-like planet and its habitability. He will be giving this talk at the Astrobiology Science Conference 2008 in Santa Clara, California, April 14-17.

Ilya Mandel will give a very brief overview of the Pacific Coast Gravity meeting that he attended last week.

We will also complete the circle of 5-min descriptions of group projects.

April 3, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

The first Group Meeting of the Spring Term.

This week everyone should come prepared to give an brief (about 5 minute), informal (no slides or handouts) summary of what you are working on now.

Anyone who has been to a conference in the past few weeks should also contact Ilya Mandel so you can give a brief synopsis.

March 27, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week's group meeting has been CANCELLED. Enjoy your Spring Break!

March 20, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM)

Michele Trenti (STScI)

Title: Dynamical Evolution of Star Clusters with Primordial Binaries and Intermediate Mass Black Holes [Abstract]

March 14, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Soko Matsumura and Genya Takeda will tell us about a recent paper of theirs to be submitted to ApJ Letters: "On the Origins of Eccentric Close-in Planets".

March 6, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (4:00PM)

Steffen Knollmann (AIP)

Title: Dark matter halo profiles in scale-free cosmologies [Abstract]

February 28, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Bart Willems will give a brief presentation on his recent work on eccentric double white dwarfs.

Everyone will then be given a chance to briefly discuss recent progress on their projects.

February 25, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (3:00PM)

Natasha Ivanova (CITA)

Title: X-Ray Binaries: Puzzle Bonanza [Abstract]

February 21, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Meagan Morscher and Vivien Raymond will be presenting seminal papers.

In the spirit of the previous student presentations of seminal papers, faculty will not attend.

Papers presented will be from Scott Tremaine's list of "greatest hits" papers, with the most citations.

Meagan will present "The structure of star clusters. III. Some simple dynamical models", by King.

Vivien will present "A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering", by Navarro, Frenk, and White.

February 14, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (3:45PM)

Diana Valencia (Harvard)

Title: Super-Earths: one step closer to finding habitable planets [Abstract]

February 7, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Stefan Umbreit will talk about his recent work on:

The Imprints of IMBHs: Monte-Carlo Simulations

Vicky Kalogera will present some results obtained with our Monte Carlo code, which we extended to include the effect of an Intermediate Mass Black Hole (IMBH) on the cluster structure (loss-cone).

January 31, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Genya Takeda will first present the thesis talk he gave at the AAS meeting.

Three grad students will present some of classical papers and lead pedagogical discussions:

Francesca will present SS disk physics: Black holes in binary systems. Observational appearance.

Sanghamitra will present "Pulsar Electrodynamics" by Goldreich and Julian: Pulsar Electrodynamics

Megan will present the King model:

January 24, 2008
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (3:45PM)

Vassilis Paschalidis (University of Chicago)
Title: Suppressing the constraint growth in numerical relativity [Abstract]

January 17, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Genya Takeda and Jeremy Sepinsky will give us an update on what attracted their attention at the AAS meeting last week.

Loren Hoffman will present a recent astro-ph paper.

Evolution of Massive Blackhole Triples II -- The effect of the BH triples dynamics on the structure of the galactic nuclear

January 10, 2008
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Happy New Year!!

Our first meeting of the Winter Term will be on January 10.
We'll catch up on news and Ilya Mandel will tell us about the a little known project called Mock LISA Data Challenge.

December 6, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Chris Deloye will tell us about his recent theoretical work on evolution of ultracompact binary donors and look at its implications for (1) interpreting observations of AM CVn binaries and (2) our understanding of how these systems form and evolve.

Ilya Mandel will give us a short summary on the outcome of the most recent Mock LISA Data Challenge and his participation.

This meeting will be the last meeting of the Fall term. Our next Meeting will be on January 10.

November 29, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week's group meeting has been calcelled.

November 15, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Stelios Kazantzidis will present his recent results on interactions between dark matter satellites and stellar disks in CDM models of structure formation.

November 14, 2007
Special Theoretical Astrophysics Seminar (1:00PM):

Holger Baumgardt (University of Bonn, Germany)
Title: The Effects of Primordial Mass Segregation on the Evolution of Globular Clusters. [Abstract]

November 9 2007
Special Group Meeting (11:00 AM):

Special Group Meeting with Dimitar Sasselov.

Presentation by Genya Takeda and Ed Thommes.

November 8, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Illya Mandel will give a presentation on the growth of black hole spins via minor mergers and the effect of central black hole spin on EMRI/IMRI detection range, which he presented at the Midwest Gravity meeting in St. Louis.

Also, Vicky Kalogera, Ilya Mandel and Genya Takeda will summarize news from three recent conferences.

October 25, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

This week Tassos Fragos will give a short talk on his recent results prepared for publication on Modeling the X-ray Luminosity Function of Elliptical Galaxies.

Vicky Kalogera will present several papers from the recent literature on the topic of Black Hole Masses and Stellar Evolution:

The Orbital Period of the Wolf-Rayet Binary IC 10 X-1; Dynamic Evidence that the Compact Object is a Black Hole,

A 15.65M black hole in an eclipsing binary in the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 33,

Supplementary Information for "A 15.65M black hole in an eclipsing binary in the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 33"

Please make an effort to look at these papers for our discussion

October 18, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

John Fregeau will present his recent paper on "X-Ray Binaries in Globular Clusters"

October 11, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

Soko Matsumura will tell us about her recent work on unstable planetary systems emerging out of gas disks.

Manou Rantsiou and Tassos Fragos will summarize highlights from summer conferences (IGC & X-Rays from Nearby Galaxies) they attended

October 4, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

We will complete our summaries of summer conference highlights and Marc van der Sluys will present his recent results from a paper he is about to submit to ApJ Letters.

September 27, 2007
Group Meeting (3:30PM):

We will have group members summarize briefly highlights from conferences attended during the summer.