BING ZHANG

Associate Professor

Department of Physics and Astronomy

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Ph.D., Peking University, P. R. China, 1997

I am an astrophysicist. Here are my:

Citation lists: Refereed journal papers, Refereed first-author journal papers

Research interest:

In recent years, I spend most of my time on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the intense bursts of gamma-rays coming from the deep space. Being stellar scale events locating at cosmological distances, GRBs make unique connections among different branches of astrophysics, including stellar astronomy, compact star physics, interstellar medium astronomy, galactic astronomy, and cosmology. Being most violent explosions in the universe, GRBs are targets of the electromagnetic telescopes of all wavelengths (radio, infrared, optical, ultraviolet, X-rays, MeV gamma-rays, GeV gamma-rays and even TeV gamma-rays) as well as non-electromagnetic detectors (such as high energy neutrinos, gravitational waves, and ultra-high energy cosmic rays). For a general introduction of GRBs and the recent development in the field, please read my two review articles
International Journal of Modern Physics A (Zhang & Meszaros 2004)
Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics (Zhang 2007)

Mainly as a theorist trying to understand the underlying physics of the observed phenomena, I also participate observational campaigns and lead an active group at UNLV to work on data analysis and modeling (see my group website). My research at UNLV has been supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through the programs of Long Term Space Astrophysics (LTSA), Astrophysical Data Analysis Program (ADP), Swift, Fermi, Chandra, and XMM-Newton.

I am a team member of NASA's Swift mission. This is a dedicated satellite studying GRBs. I have participated the following discoveries of the Swift team:

Discovery of the transition phase between the GRB prompt emission and afterglow (Nature paper)

Discovery of erratic X-ray flares following GRBs (Science paper)

Discovery of the first X-ray afterglow of short-duration GRBs (GRB 050509B) (Nature paper)

Discovery of the long term X-ray afterglow of the short GRB 050724 in an early type galaxy (Nature paper)

Discovery of GRB 050904 at z=6.29 (Nature paper) and GRB 080913 at z=6.7 (ApJ paper)

Discovery of GRB 060218: a nearby (z=0.033) GRB with Type Ic supernova association (Nature paper)

Discovery of GRB 060614: a long GRB without SN association that demands modification of the GRB classification scheme. (my Nature "News and Views" paper)

Discovery of the "naked eye" GRB 080319B (Nature paper)

The PI Neil Gehrels and the Swift team are awarded with the 2007 Bruno Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division, American Astronomical Society, "for major advances in the scientific understanding of gamma-ray bursts. These include groundbreaking observations to determine precise location of short gamma-ray bursts, and the discovery of enormously bright X-ray flares in the early afterglows".

My ApJ paper on the canonical GRB X-ray lightcurve and its theoretical interpretations was identified as the New Hot Paper in Space Science by Essential Science Indicators in July 2007. Here is the paper, and here is a brief interview of me about this paper. According to a citation analysis of the GRB work by Thomson Reuters Science Watch, my total number of citations and total number of papers are ranked #11 and #6 during the past 10 years (10-year ranking). Among the top 20 most cited papers in the past two years, I have 6 papers on the list (#1, #2, #5, #14, #16, #19) (2-year top 20 papers). I also have three first-author papers identified as the core papers of Research Front Map of "Gamma-Ray Bursts".

Here are some links reporting on my research work

Astronomy.com

Las Vegas Sun

Review Journal

UNLV

Nature (1) and (2)

NASA

Science

Nature

Here are some GRB meetings/workshops that I have hosted/organized:
KIAA Program on GRB Physics (May 4 - June 19, 2009)
The 2008 Nanjing GRB Conference (Jun. 23 - 27, 2008)
The 2008 Swift Science meeting at UNLV (Feb. 4 - 5, 2008)

I also study other astrophysical objects, including neutron stars and their various manifestations (such as radio and gamma-ray pulsars, magnetars, X-ray pulsars, etc), black holes of all scales (stellar-scale ones at the central engine of GRBs and gigantic ones in the center of galaxies such as active galactic nuclei), collision events in planetary systems, and objects in the high-redshift universe.

Teaching:

AST103 (fall 2004, spring 2005, spring 2010)
AST104 (fall 2005, spring 2006, spring 2007, fall 2007, spring 2008, spring 2009)
AST713 (spring 2006, fall 2008)
AST725 (fall 2006, fall 2009)

Research Group:

Current group members include:

Mr. Francisco Virgili (graduate student)
Ms. Amanda Maxham (graduate student)
Mr. Bin-Bin Zhang (graduate student)
Mr. David Whitehead (graduate student)
Ms. Tesla Birnbaum (undergraduate student)
Mr. Robert Gex (undergraduate student)
Dr. En-Wei Liang (visiting scholar)
Dr. Yi-Zhong Fan (visiting scholar)
Dr. Yun-Ming Dong (visiting scholar)

It was my pleasure to have the following people to visit and work in my group in the past:

Dr. En-Wei Liang, 12/04-12/07 (RA). Current position: Professor, Guangxi University, China.
Dr. Nayantara Gupta, 03/06-09/07. Current position: faculty, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India.
Dr. Jaroslaw Dyks, 10/04-05/05. Current position: faculty, Nicolaus Copernicus Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Torun, Poland.

Past long term visitors:

Prof. Janusz Gil, 01/05-07/05, visiting professor. Current position: Director and Professor, Institute of Astronomy, Zielona Gora University, Poland.

Prof. Zi-Gao Dai, 02/06-05/06, visiting professor. Current position: Changjiang Professor, Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, China.

Dr. Yi-Zhong Fan, 09/04-08/05, visiting student. Current position: Postdoc fellow, Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark; and Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Past short term visitors:

Dr. Resmi Lekshmi (IAP, France, 08/09-11/09)

Dr. Huirong Yan (Univ. of Arizona, 04/09)

Dr. Sarira Sahu (UNAM, Mexico, 03/09)

Mr. Kohta Murase (Yukawa Institute, Kyoto University, visiting student, 10/08-11/08)

Ms. Nicola Lyons (University of Leicester, UK, visiting student, 04/08-05/08)

Dr. Xue-Feng Wu (Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, 11/07)

Ms. Razieh Behkam (Arizona State University, visiting student, 07/07-08/07)

Mr. Rong-Feng Shen (University of Texas, Austin, visiting student, 08/07)

Dr. Yosuke Mizuno (National Space Science and Technology Center, 04/06, 04/08-06/08)

Dr. Ken-Ichi Nishikawa (National Space Science and Technology Center, 04/06)

Dr. Asaf Pe'er (Space Telescope Science Institute, 02/06, 02/09)

Contact information:

Office: Rm. 238, BPB

Phone: (702)-895-4050 (Office), (702)-450-6106(Home)

Fax: (702)-895-0804

Mailing Address: Box 454002, 4505 Maryland Parkway, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4002, USA

Email: zhang@physics.unlv.edu

Since Feb. 27, 2007, the number of visits to this website is