Base and Core Courses Descriptions

Base and core courses provide a foundation for competency in the field of astronomy. Students are required to have completed all seven base and core courses before admission to PhD Candidacy. Here we provide a short description of each of those courses.

AST 643: Astrophysics of Stars and Stellar Populations. This course includes topics of gravitational equilibrium configurations, equations of state, radiative and heat transfer, stellar energy sources, stellar modeling and evolution, the connection between theory and observations, simple stellar populations, composite stellar populations, and unresolved stellar populations.

AST 644: Radiative Processes in Astrophysics. This course covers topics of continuous emission mechanisms (synchrotron radiation, inverse compton, and free-free emission), dust emission, photo- ionization and recombination of atomic lines, line broadening. Applications to Astrophysics, such as definitions of star formation rates, are discussed.

AST 645: Astrophysics of Stars and Galaxies. This course covers topics of dynamic and gravitational principles applied to astrophysics. Potential theory, orbital mechanics, virial theorem, Jeans' equations, equilibrium and stability of self-gravitating systems, kinetic theory. Applications to galactic structure and evolution, mergers, dark matter, evolution of star clusters and galactic nuclei and solar system dynamics.

AST 717: Astrophysics of Fluids and Spacetime – description TBD

AST 732: Computational Methods in Astrophysics. This course covers basic numerical methods: linear algebra, interpolation and extrapolation, integration, root finding, extremization and differential equations. Introduction to Monte Carlo techniques used to stimulate processes that occur in nature and methods to simulate experiments that measure these processes including random number generators, sampling techniques, and multidimensional simulation. Methods for extracting information from experiments such as experimental measurements and uncertainties, confidence intervals, parameter estimation, likelihood methods, least squares method, hypothesis tests, and goodness of fit tests. Chaotic dynamics and other special topics as time permits.

AST 741: The Interstellar Medium. This course describes the gas and dust components of the interstellar medium in ionized regions, atomic clouds, and molecular clouds. Shows how data from optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths can be utilized to determine density, temperature, composition, and dynamics of the various phases of the ISM. Comparison of these results with theoretical models. Includes an overview of the processes that affect the evolution of the ISM including the incorporation of gas and dust into stars, the effect of HII regions and young stellar objects, and the return of matter from evolved stars and supernovae.

AST 748: Cosmology and General Relativity. The course covers observational cosmology and cosmological principles. Background radiation and Olbers' paradox. Newtonian cosmology. General relativity, gravitational waves, relativistic cosmology, and gravitational collapse. Theories of the universe and origin of celestial structure.