Postdoctoral Fellow | Astrophysics | Institute for Advanced Study
About
Hi! I am a theoretical and computational astrophysicist, studying dynamical phenomena on scales ranging from galaxies to satellites in low Earth orbit. Currently, I am a member of the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study.
My research involves applying the tools of theoretical dynamics to investigate the structure of galaxies like the Milky Way. I focus on studying how smaller groupings of stars – including globular clusters, open clusters, and binary star systems – are affected by the Milky Way, and what we can learn about our Galaxy’s structure and evolution based on the present-day configurations of these star groups. I am also interested in using dynamics to understand the nature of dark matter and compare between different models of dark matter. I have developed numerical tools to simulate and analyze galaxies composed of fuzzy dark matter.
Below are a few selected highlights from my research on galactic structure. For more, see my list of Publications.
How to Study the Galactic Bar Using Binary Star Systems (Yavetz 2024)
Many of the stars in the Milky Way are members of binary systems, and a subset of these eventually become gravitationally unbound due to a combination of the Galactic tidal field and kicks from passing objects. The cumulative distribution of unbound binary separations at different locations in the Galaxy is highly sensitive to the presence of large structures in the Galaxy, such as a rigidly rotating Galactic bar.
Stream Morphology as a Probe of the Milky Way Halo’s Shape (Yavetz et al. 2023)
When a globular cluster or a dwarf galaxy falls into a galaxy like the Milky Way, it typically gets shredded into a long, one-dimensional filament of stars known as a stellar stream. However, many observed stellar streams boast additional (and often unexplained) features, including gaps, bifurcations, kinks, and fans. We catalogued a variety of stream features that can arise in the vicinity of orbital resonances, and demonstrated how their existence can be used to constrain the shape of the Milky Way’s dark matter halo.
Some locations in galaxies are fundamentally inhospitable to stellar streams. We showed how the existence of resonant regions in non-spherical galactic potentials can be detected based on the width of stellar streams in those regions.
Fuzzy Dark Matter
Below are a few selected highlights from my research on Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM). For more, see my list of Publications.
Comparing Cold and Fuzzy Dark Matter using Tidally Perturbed Dwarf Galaxies (Widmark et al. 2024)
In work led by Axel Widmark (University of Copenhagen), we compared the evolution of dwarf galaxies composed of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) after a tidal perturbation. We showed how the unique dynamics of FDM lead to long-lived breathing and rotating modes that are also imprinted on the observable stellar component of the galaxies, providing a potential path towards distinguishing between the two models with future dwarf galaxy surveys.
Heating and Disruption of Stellar Shells in FDM Galaxies (Pfaffman & Yavetz in prep.)
The tidal disruption of dwarf galaxies on radial orbits leads to the formation of shell-like structures surrounding the host galaxy. In work led by undergraduate student Gabriel Pfaffman (Columbia University), we showed how in FDM galaxies, the shells can be in resonance with the gravitational fluctuations of the central soliton, leading to unique morphologies. In some cases, the oscillating central potential can also completely destroy the shell-like structures.
Using the Schwarzschild Method to Efficiently Simulate FDM Halos (Yavetz et al. 2022)
One of the main barriers to studying Fuzzy Dark Matter is the computational cost of simulating galaxies and galaxy clusters composed of FDM. We devised an efficient numerical algorithm for modeling FDM galaxies using a superposition of FDM eigenmodes, based on the Schwarzschild method for constructing galaxies in equilibrium.
Satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) must conserve their orbital eccentricity to a high degree in order to avoid crashing back into Earth. However, perturbations from the Earth’s multipole moments, the Sun, and the Moon, do not conserve angular momentum, and in theory, could cause all LEO satellites to crash. Of course, this is not the case, as evidenced by the large (and rapidly growing) number of satellites on stable orbits. We showed that, though most of the perturbations mentioned above would indeed cause a large subset of satellites to crash, an accidental property of the Earth’s quadrupole potential has a stabilizing effect that negates the influence of all the other sub-dominant perturbations.
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
A complete list of my publications can also be found using the searches below:
Tomer Yavetz, BH-227 1 Einstein Drive Princeton, NJ 08540
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deck.shuffle();
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print 'It took ' + i + ' iterations to sort the deck.';
