Research Expertise and Interest

astronomy

Research Description

Wenbin Lu is an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy.  He is interested in high-energy transient phenomena — the sources that suddenly show up luminously on the sky and then quickly fade away — including fast radio bursts, tidal disruption events, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, compact object mergers. These sources are the Universe’s most extreme physics labs where violent interactions occur in an environment of high energy density, large spacetime curvature, and/or strong magnetic fields. The goal is to theoretically understand the underlying mechanisms that control the multi-wavelength/messenger behaviors of these spectacular events. Wenbin’s studies involve plasma physics, general/special relativity, hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, (binary) stellar evolution, accretion disk, and tidal interactions.