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Identifying Decaying Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from their Variable Electromagnetic Emission
Zoltán Haiman, Bence Kocsis, Kristen Menou +2
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) with masses in the range 10^4-10^7 M_sun/(1+z), produced in galaxy mergers, are thought to complete their coalescence due to the emission…
Long period planets from dynamical relaxation
Caleb Scharf, Kristen Menou
Recent imaging campaigns indicate the likely existence of massive planets (~ 1-10 MJ) on ~1000 year orbits about a few percent of stars. Such objects are not easily explained in mo…
Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: A Shallow Three-Dimensional Model
Kristen Menou, Emily Rauscher
Remote observing of exoplanetary atmospheres is now possible, offering us access to circulation regimes unlike any of the familiar Solar System cases. Atmospheric circulation model…
Gravitational Radiation Driven Supermassive Black Hole Binary Inspirals as Periodically Variable Electromagnetic Sources
Zoltán Haiman, Bence Kocsis, Kristen Menou
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) produced in galaxy mergers are thought to complete their coalescence, below separations of r_GW=10^{-3} (M_BH/10^8 M_sun)^{3/4} pc, as the…
Habitable Climates: The Influence of Obliquity
David S. Spiegel, Kristen Menou, Caleb A. Scharf
Extrasolar terrestrial planets with the potential to host life might have large obliquities or be subject to strong obliquity variations. We revisit the habitability of oblique pla…
Microphysical dissipation, turbulence and magnetic fields in hyper-accreting discs
Elena M. Rossi, Philip J. Armitage, Kristen Menou
Hyper-accreting discs occur in compact-object mergers and collapsars, and may power gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We calculate the microscopic viscosity and resistivity of plasma in the…
Cosmological Physics with Black Holes (and Possibly White Dwarfs)
Kristen Menou, Zoltan Haiman, Bence Kocsis
The notion that microparsec-scale black holes can be used to probe gigaparsec-scale physics may seem counterintuitive, at first. Yet, the gravitational observatory LISA will detect…
Pre-Merger Localization of Gravitational-Wave Standard Sirens With LISA: Triggered Search for an Electromagnetic Counterpart
Bence Kocsis, Zoltan Haiman, Kristen Menou
Electromagnetic (EM) counterparts to supermassive black hole binary mergers observed by LISA can be localized to within the field of view of astronomical instruments ~10 deg^2 hour…
On Signatures of Atmospheric Features in Thermal Phase Curves of Hot Jupiters
Emily Rauscher, Kristen Menou, James Y-K. Cho +2
Turbulence is ubiquitous in Solar System planetary atmospheres. In hot Jupiter atmospheres, the combination of moderately slow rotation and thick pressure scale height may result i…
Habitable Climates
David S. Spiegel, Kristen Menou, Caleb A. Scharf
According to the standard liquid-water definition, the Earth is only partially habitable. We reconsider planetary habitability in the framework of energy-balance models, the simple…
Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: A Review of Current Understanding
Adam P. Showman, Kristen Menou, James Y-K. Cho
Hot Jupiters are new laboratories for the physics of giant planet atmospheres. Subject to unusual forcing conditions, the circulation regime on these planets may be unlike anything…
Probing Gravity with Spacetime Sirens
Cedric Deffayet, Kristen Menou
A gravitational observatory such as LISA will detect coalescing pairs of massive black holes, accurately measure their luminosity distance and help identify a host galaxy or an ele…
The Origin of Solar Activity in the Tachocline
Kyle P. Parfrey, Kristen Menou
Solar active regions, produced by the emergence of tubes of strong magnetic field in the photosphere, are restricted to within 35 degrees of the solar equator. The nature of the dy…
On the nonlinear saturation of the magnetorotational instability near threshold in a thin-gap Taylor-Couette setup
O. M. Umurhan, O. Regev, K. Menou
We study the saturation near threshold of the axisymmetric magnetorotational instability (MRI) of a viscous, resistive, incompressible fluid in a thin-gap Taylor-Couette configurat…
Turbulent Torques on Protoplanets in a Dead Zone
Jeffrey S. Oishi, Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, Kristen Menou
Migration of protoplanets in their gaseous host disks may be largely responsible for the observed orbital distribution of extrasolar planets. Recent simulations have shown that the…
Pre-Merger Localization of Gravitational-Wave Standard Sirens With LISA I: Harmonic Mode Decomposition
Bence Kocsis, Zoltán Haiman, Kristen Menou +1
The continuous improvement in localization errors (sky position and distance) in real time as LISA observes the gradual inspiral of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary can be o…
Hot Jupiter Variability in Eclipse Depth
Emily Rauscher, Kristen Menou, James Y-K. Cho +2
Physical conditions in the atmospheres of tidally-locked, slowly-rotating hot Jupiters correspond to dynamical circulation regimes with Rhines scales and Rossby deformation radii c…
Toward Eclipse Mapping of Hot Jupiters
Emily Rauscher, Kristen Menou, Sara Seager +3
Recent Spitzer infrared measurements of hot Jupiter eclipses suggest that eclipse mapping techniques could be used to spatially resolve the day-side photospheric emission of these…
The phase-dependent Infrared brightness of the extrasolar planet upsilon Andromedae b
J. Harrington, B. Hansen, S. Luszcz +5
The star upsilon Andromeda is orbited by three known planets, the innermost of which has an orbital period of 4.617 days and a mass at least 0.69 that of Jupiter. This planet is cl…
A weakly nonlinear analysis of the magnetorotational instability in a model channel flow
O. M. Umurhan, K. Menou, O. Regev
We show by means of a perturbative weakly nonlinear analysis that the axisymmetric magnetorotational instability (MRI) of a viscous, resistive, incompressible rotating shear flow i…
Atmospheric Circulation of Close-In Extrasolar Giant Planets: I. Global, Barotropic, Adiabatic Simulations
James Y-K. Cho, Kristen Menou, Brad Hansen +1
We present results from a set of over 300 pseudospectral simulations of atmospheric circulation on extrasolar giant planets with circular orbits. The simulations are of high enough…
Magneto-Rotational Transport in the Early Sun
Kristen Menou, Joel LeMer
Angular momentum transport must have occurred in the Sun's radiative zone to explain its current solid body rotation. We survey the stability of the early Sun's radiative zone with…
Hot Accretion With Conduction: Spontaneous Thermal Outflows
Takamitsu Tanaka, Kristen Menou
Motivated by the low-collisionality of gas accreted onto black holes in Sgr A* and other nearby galactic nuclei, we study a family of 2D advective accretion solutions with thermal…
Diffusive Migration of Low-Mass Proto-planets in Turbulent Disks
Eric T. Johnson, Jeremy Goodman, Kristen Menou
Torque fluctuations due to magnetorotational turbulence in proto-planetary disks may greatly influence the migration patterns and survival probabilities of nascent planets. Provide…