Man

Nathan William Cecil Leigh Kleindfeldt

Associate Professor

Universidad de Concepción

Concepcion, Chile

Líneas de Investigación


My research interests include gravitational dynamics, chaos, black holes, star clusters, single and binary star evolution, star formation, and compact objects. I analyze and compare simulated and observational data, often in the realm of Big Data.

Educación

  •  Theoretical Astrophysics, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY. Canada, 2011
  •  Theoretical Astrophysics, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY. Chile, 2007
  •  Theoretical Astrophysics, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. Chile, 2003

Experiencia Académica

  •   Research Fellow Full Time

    EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCE-NETHERLANDS

    Leiden, Holanda

    2011 - 2013

  •   Kalbfleisch Research Fellow Full Time

    NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

    Earth and Space Sciences

    New York, Estados Unidos

    2013 - 2017

  •   Postdoctoral Researcher Full Time

    Flatiron Institute, Center for Computational Astrophysics

    New York, Estados Unidos

    2017 - 2018

  •   Associate Faculty Full Time

    UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCION

    Physics

    Concepcion, Chile

    2018 - 2021

Experiencia Profesional

  •   Associate Faculty Full Time

    Universidad de Concepcion

    Concepcion, Chile

    2018 - At present

Formación de Capital Humano


As described in more detail in my CV, over the past 4 years alone, I have supervised or co-supervised 25 students (see my CV for a list), most of whom I have published with as co-authors in one of the primary peer-reviewed astronomy journals (MNRAS, ApJ). I have taught a variety of astrophysics and physics courses over the years, most recently at the graduate level at the Universidad de Concepcion. Using the textbook I have co-written, I designed a graduate course on Celestial Mechanics that teaches students how to get into peer-review research. I have supervised over 10 undergraduate students. These students were primarily funded through the NSF REU Program, the AstroCom Program at the City University of New York and the NASA New York Space Grant Community College Partnership. These last two programs aim to provide research experience to under-represented minorities in the sciences early on in their careers and to help them finish their degree in the sciences. A subset of the undergraduates I have supervised were funded by the University of Chicago. We were in the process of developing a summer exchange program with your undergraduate students, but have had to put this venture on hold due to the covid outbreak.

At the Universidad de Concepcion, I currently have 6 students I am supervising, including two undergraduate thesis students, three Master's students and one Fulbright student. My first undergraduate thesis student has now completed his project and the paper has been accepted to a high-quality peer-review astronomy journal. He will now continue with me for his PhD. I have also co-supervised 5 students over the last two years, all of whom have now published their papers in high-quality peer-review astronomy journals.


Difusión y Transferencia


As indicated in my CV, nearly every student I have supervised over the last ten years has published their work in high-quality peer-review level astronomy journals. For my Fondecyt Iniciacion Project #11180005, we are currently finishing the final paper for this project, and will hopefully submit it to a peer-review astronomy journal within the next month or so. More recently, I have been involved in writing an undergraduate textbook called “Moving Planets Around” as one of the lead authors, now in press with MIT University Press, which teaches students how to write computer simulations to evolve planetary systems and use them to conduct publishable scientific research with limited resources. The students learn how to program in Python and C++, develop a dynamic software environment and even design, conduct and complete novel research projects publishable in peer-reviewed journals. Viraj Manwadkar, a University of Chicago undergraduate student, was the first to use this resource to publish his own first-author paper on the three-body problem (Manwadkar, Trani & Leigh 2020, 497, 3694).


Premios y Distinciones

  •   Nathan W. C. Leigh

    UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCION

    Chile, 2018

    Fondecyt Iniciacion #11180005, The Dynamical Origins of Black Hole Binary Mergers


 

Article (59)

Filament Rotation in the California L1482 Cloud
Formation of supermassive black hole seeds in nuclear star clusters via gas accretion and runaway collisions
Massive Stellar Triples Leading to Sequential Binary Black Hole Mergers in the Field
Small- N collisional dynamics – V. From N ≲ 10 to N ≳ 103
A New Method to Constrain the Origins of Dark-matter-free Galaxies and Their Unusual Globular Clusters
Hot Jupiter and Ultra-cold Saturn Formation in Dense Star Clusters
Mergers of equal-mass binaries with compact object companions from mass transfer in triple star systems
Orbital Migration of Interacting Stellar Mass Black Holes in Disks around Supermassive Black Holes. II. Spins and Incoming Objects
Illustrating chaos=> a schematic discretization of the general three-body problem in Newtonian gravity
On the rate of black hole binary mergers in galactic nuclei due to dynamical hardening
The evolution of kicked stellar-mass black holes in star cluster environments
The fate of close encounters between binary stars and binary super-massive black holes
When does a star cluster become a multiple star system? II. A half-life formalism for arbitrary particle masses
A Novel Mechanism for the Distance- Redshift Relation
An analytic method for identifying dynamically formed runaway stars
Formation of runaway stars in a star-cluster potential
Mass Evaporation Rate of Globular Clusters in a Strong Tidal Field
MOCCA-SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters - III. Cataclysmic variables - implications of model assumptions
MOCCA-SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters – II. Cataclysmic variables – progenitors and population at birth
MOCCA-SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters – III. Cataclysmic variables – implications of model assumptions
Numerical study of N = 4 binary-binary scatterings in a background potential
On the origin of sub-subgiant stars I. Demographics
On the origin of sub-subgiant stars III. Formation frequencies
Small-N collisional dynamics – III=> The battle for the realm of not- so-small-N
Interrupted Binary Mass Transfer in Star Clusters
Masses and Scaling Relations for Nuclear Star Clusters, and Their Co-Existence with Super-Massive Black Holes
MOCCA- SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters – I. Cataclysmic variables – present-day population
On the chaotic four-body problem in Newtonian gravity – I. Identical point particles
On the origins of enigmatic stellar populations in Local Group galactic nuclei
When Does a Star Cluster Become a Multiple Star System? I. Lifetimes of equal-mass small-N systems
Back to the Future=> Estimating Initial Globular Cluster Masses From Their Present-Day Stellar Mass Functions
Implications for the Formation of Blue Stragglers From HST Ultraviolet Observations of NGC 188
Interrupted Stellar Encounters in Star Clusters
M-Dwarf Binaries as Tracers of Star and Brown Dwarf Formation
MOCCA Code for Star Cluster Simulations – IV. A New Scenario for Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Formation in Globular Clusters
Nuclear Star Cluster Formation in Energy-Space
Small-N Collisional Dynamics – II. Roaming the Realm of Not-So-Small-N
The State of Globular Clusters at Birth II=> Primordial Binaries
Detection of White Dwarf Companions to Blue Stragglers in the Open Cluster NGC 188=> Direct Evidence for Recent Mass Transfer
On the Co-Existence of Stellar-Mass and Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Globular Clusters
Revisiting the unversality of (multiple) star formation in present-day star formation regions
Stellar Dynamics in Gas=> The Role of Gas Damping
The Effect of Orbital Eccentricity on the Dynamical Evolution of Star Clusters
Gas Depletion in Primordial Globular Clusters due to Accretion on to Stellar-Mass Black Holes
Modifying Two-Body Relaxation in N-body Systems by Gas Accretion
The Dynamical Significance of Triple Stars in Star Clusters
The Origins of Blue Stragglers and Binarity in Globular Clusters
The State of Globular Clusters at Birth=> Emergence From the Gas-Embedded Phase
Nuclear Star Clusters and the Stellar Spheroids of their Host Galaxies
Quantifying the Universality of the Stellar Initial Mass Function
Small-N Collisional Dynamics=> Pushing Into the Realm of Not-So-Small N
An Analytic Model for Blue Straggler Formation in Globular Clusters
An Analytic Technique for Constraining the Dynamical Origins of Multiple Star Systems Containing Merger Products
Dissecting the Colour-Magnitude Diagram=> A Homogeneous Catalogue of Stellar Populations in Globular Clusters
Multiple Stellar Populations and Their Influence on Blue Stragglers
A Binary Origin for Blue Stragglers in Globular Clusters
Stellar Populations in Globular Cluster Cores=> Evidence for A Peculiar Trend Among Red Giant Branch Stars
Where the Blue Stragglers Roam=> The Link Between Formation and Environment
Self-Correlation Analysis of RV Tauri Stars and Related Objects

BookWhole (1)

Moving Planets Around

Proyecto (1)

The Dynamical Origins of Black Hole Binary Mergers
10
Nathan Leigh

Associate Professor

Physical Sciences

Universidad de Concepción

Concepcion, Chile

1
Monica Zorotovic

Profesor Adjunto

Instituto de Física y Astronomía

UNIVERSIDAD DE VALPARAISO

Valparaiso, Chile