Professor
I am an astrophysicist. Here are my:
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 located at cosmological distances, GRBs make unique
connections between 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 (high energy
neutrinos, gravitational waves, and ultra-high energy cosmic rays).
For a general introduction of GRBs and recent developments
in the field, please read my recent review articles
Comptes Rendus Physique
(Zhang 2011)
Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics
(Zhang 2007)
International Journal of Modern Physics A
(Zhang & Meszaros 2004)
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 theoretical 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:
The PI Neil Gehrels and the Swift team were 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 in 2008, 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 had 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
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)