Stuart L. Shapiro

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Stuart L. Shapiro
Born
Stuart Louis Shapiro

(1947-12-06) December 6, 1947 (age 76)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Harvard University
Princeton University
Known for BSSN formalism
Awards Hans Bethe Prize 2017
Scientific career
Fields numerical relativity, black holes, neutron stars
Institutions University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Cornell University
Thesis Accretion onto black holes: the emergent radiation spectrum (1973)
Doctoral advisor Jim Peebles

Stuart Louis Shapiro (born December 6, 1947, in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American theoretical astrophysicist, who works on numerical relativity with applications in astrophysics, specialising in compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes.

Contents

Career

Shapiro studied at Harvard University and graduated with a BSc. in 1969, completed his Master's degree in 1971 at Princeton, and completed his PhD in 1973. [1] He became a professor in 1975 at Cornell University. [1] In 1996 he became a professor of physics and astrophysics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. [1] He is an expert in the numerical simulation of astrophysical phenomena in general relativity and has written two standard works on the subject.

In 1979 he was a Sloan Fellow and in 1989 became a Guggenheim Fellow. [1] In 1998 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society. [2] In 2017, he received the Hans A. Bethe Prize for his seminal and sustained contributions to understanding physical processes in compact object astrophysics, and advancing numerical relativity. [3] [4]

Research

His research concerns the physics of black holes and neutron stars, gravitational collapse and the development of black holes, gravitational waves from the inspiral of neutron stars and black holes in binary systems, the dynamics of large N-body, cosmological questions (big bang nucleosynthesis), and neutrino astrophysics. He has simulated the spectrum of the radiation that develops when gas from an accretion disk falls onto a black hole or neutron star and the destruction and swallowing up of stars by a supermassive black hole in the galaxy. Additionally, the collision and merging of black holes and the development of black holes in galaxies from a relativistic, shock-free gas and the collapse of an unstable relativistic cluster. He showed that toroidal black holes as a transient state in gravitational collapse can develop and that the possibility for the development of a naked singularity exists in the collision of shock-free matter from otherwise normal initial conditions, which violates the cosmic censorship hypothesis. [5]

He has also worked on the detection of gravitational wave signals and their observation in gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO. [6]

Personal life

He has been married since 1971 and has a son and a daughter. [1]

Publications (selection)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black hole</span> Object that has a no-return boundary

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.

The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities arising in general relativity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General relativity</span> Theory of gravitation as curved spacetime

General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second order partial differential equations.

In general relativity, a naked singularity is a hypothetical gravitational singularity without an event horizon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational singularity</span> Condition in which spacetime itself breaks down

A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a condition in which gravity is predicted to be so intense that spacetime itself would break down catastrophically. As such, a singularity is by definition no longer part of the regular spacetime and cannot be determined by "where" or "when". Gravitational singularities exist at a junction between general relativity and quantum mechanics; therefore, the properties of the singularity cannot be described without an established theory of quantum gravity. Trying to find a complete and precise definition of singularities in the theory of general relativity, the current best theory of gravity, remains a difficult problem. A singularity in general relativity can be defined by the scalar invariant curvature becoming infinite or, better, by a geodesic being incomplete.

The following is a timeline of gravitational physics and general relativity.

A strange star is a hypothetical astronomical object, a quark star made of strange quark matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational collapse</span> Contraction of an astronomical object due to the influence of its gravity

Gravitational collapse is the contraction of an astronomical object due to the influence of its own gravity, which tends to draw matter inward toward the center of gravity. Gravitational collapse is a fundamental mechanism for structure formation in the universe. Over time an initial, relatively smooth distribution of matter, after sufficient accretion, may collapse to form pockets of higher density, such as stars or black holes.

Numerical relativity is one of the branches of general relativity that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems. To this end, supercomputers are often employed to study black holes, gravitational waves, neutron stars and many other phenomena governed by Einstein's theory of general relativity. A currently active field of research in numerical relativity is the simulation of relativistic binaries and their associated gravitational waves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics</span>

The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational-wave astronomy. The institute was founded in 1995 and is located in the Potsdam Science Park in Golm, Potsdam and in Hannover where it closely collaborates with the Leibniz University Hannover. Both the Potsdam and the Hannover parts of the institute are organized in three research departments and host a number of independent research groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of astronomy</span>

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to astronomy:

Richard H. Price is an American physicist specializing in general relativity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational wave</span> Propagating spacetime ripple

Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity that are generated by the accelerated masses of binary stars and other motions of gravitating masses, and propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by Henri Poincaré in 1905 as the gravitational equivalent of electromagnetic waves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational-wave astronomy</span> Branch of astronomy using gravitational waves

Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging field of science, concerning the observations of gravitational waves to collect relatively unique data and make inferences about objects such as neutron stars and black holes, events such as supernovae, and processes including those of the early universe shortly after the Big Bang.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to black holes:

The Hans A. Bethe Prize, is presented annually by the American Physical Society. The prize honors outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields. The prize consists of $10,000 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient.

Thomas W. Baumgarte is a German physicist specializing in the numerical simulation of compact objects in general relativity.

Susan Marjorie Scott is an Australian mathematical physicist whose work concerns general relativity, gravitational singularities, and black holes. She is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University (ANU).

The Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge Alliance was a scientific collaboration of international physics institutes and research groups dedicated to simulating the sources and predicting the waveforms for gravitational waves, in anticipation of gravitational radiation experiments such as LIGO.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Vitae: Stuart L. Shapiro" (PDF). Retrieved June 24, 2018.
  2. "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society. (search on year=1998 and institution=University of Illinois)
  3. Schwink, Siv (April 30, 2005). "Shapiro wins 2017 Bethe Prize" . Retrieved June 24, 2018.
  4. "2017 Hans A. Bethe Prize Recipient" (Press release). American Physical Society. 2017. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  5. Shapiro, Stuart L.; Teukolsky, Saul A.; Winicour, Jeffrey (December 15, 1995). "Toroidal black holes and topological censorship". Physical Review D. American Physical Society (APS). 52 (12): 6982–6987. Bibcode:1995PhRvD..52.6982S. doi:10.1103/physrevd.52.6982. ISSN   0556-2821. PMID   10019239.
  6. Schwink, Siv (October 16, 2017). "Early theoretical work at Illinois foreshadowed LIGO/Virgo announcement" . Retrieved June 24, 2018.
  7. Pullin, Jorge (2011). "Review of Numerical Relativity: Solving Einstein's Equations on the Computer by Thomas W. Baumgarte and Stuart L. Shapiro". Physics Today. 64 (2): 49–50. doi:10.1063/1.3554318.
  8. Shapiro, S.; Teukolsky, S. (1986). "Book Review - Black-Holes White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars by S. Shapiro & S. Teukolsky}". Acta Cosmologica. 14: 153. Bibcode:1986AcC....14..153S.