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I describe my work to tackle problems in gravitational dynamics in astronomy. First, I describe my efforts in the small scale Universe: our Solar System and exoplanetary systems. We developed a fast and accurate codes to solve the transit timing variation problem in exoplanets. We have used this to obtain unprecedented precision on the composition of TRAPPIST-1 system in two important papers on this system. We have developed a code for understanding systems with minor bodies and planets undergoing close encounters which is seeing wide adoption. I am currently using this code to make predictions about interstellar asteroids captured in our Solar System. To compliment these efforts, I am also using the Minor Planet Center’s database to discover hyperbolic objects in the Solar System. I describe an ephemeris quality integrator we built capable of probing fundamental physics in our Solar System in the era of high precision GAIA measurements. Finally, I describe our Nbody code for making predictions of gravitational wave sources in stellar cluster systems in what is the first symplectic code for these purposes.
David M. Hernandez is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics— Harvard and Smithsonian. He obtained his PhD from MIT in 2018, where he worked with Edmund Bertschinger and Jack Wisdom. Previous to that he obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona. David’s main interests lies in the evolution of gravitational systems over cosmic time. He has developed novel methods to solve such systems at different scales with applications ranging from transit timing variations to gravitational wave predictions in stellar clusters.
Video record is available: https://vshare.sjtu.edu.cn/open/18d26282e00e5cb65bb6f473f73afd04