Chung-Pei

Research Expertise and Interest

astrophysics, black hole, dark matter, cosmology, formation and evolution of galaxies, cosmic microwave background radiation

Research Description

Understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies and large scale structure in the Universe has been the central theme of my recent research. With the aid of large supercomputers, my collaborators and I have performed numerical simulations of the clustering of dark matter in various cosmological models of structure formation from the Early Universe until the present day. By comparing the simulation results with astronomical observations, constraints can be obtained on the nature of dark matter such as the mass of neutrinos and on cosmological parameters such as the density and expansion rate of the Universe. Another part of my research effort has been on the computation of the temperature variations imprinted on the cosmic microwave background radiation which provides a snapshot of the infant Universe. Other interests include theoretical particle physics and classical violin performance.

In the News

Record massive black holes discovered lurking in monster galaxies

UC Berkeley astronomer Chung-Pei Ma, graduate student Nicholas McConnell and colleagues have discovered the largest black holes to date ‑- two monsters with masses equivalent to 10 billion suns that are threatening to consume anything, even light, within a region five times the size of our solar system.

Loading Class list ...