Research Scientist | Jonathan Thornburg

Senior Scientist, Ph.D.
Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 1993

Contact Information:

Astronomy Department
Indiana University
Swain West 312
727 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: (812) 855-6918
Fax: (812) 855-8725

Biographical Information:

Dr. Thornburg joined the IU Astronomy faculty in 2008 as a Research Scientist. He received a B.S. in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science from Simon Fraser University in 1983, and his M.S. and Ph.D in Astronomy from the University of British Columbia in 1985 and 1993 respectively. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Vienna, and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany. Most recently he was a lecturer in the School of Mathematics at the University of Southampton.

Research Interests

Dr. Thornburg's primary research interests span a variety of topics in dynamical and gravitational astrophysics, with a particular focus on the orbital decay and final coalescence of binary black hole systems. He worked for many years on various aspects of simulating comparable-mass binary black hole systems, using full nonlinear numerical solution of the Einstein equations. More recently he has begun simulating binary black hole systems with very large mass ratios (typically 10⁵:1). These "EMRIs" (extreme mass ratio inspirals) model stellar-mass black holes orbiting the galactic-center black hole, and are expected to be strong sources of gravitational radiation for the proposed LISA space gravitational-radiation detector.

Selected Publications

• Are moving punctures equivalent to moving black holes?
  Thornburg, J., Diener, P., Pollney, D., Rezzolla, L., Schnetter, E., Seidel, E., & Takahashi, R., Classical and Quantum Gravity 24, 3911.
• Event and Apparent Horizon Finders for 3+1 Numerical Relativity
  Thornburg, J., Living Reviews in Relativity 10, 3.
• Recoil Velocities from Equal-Mass Binary-Black-Hole Mergers
  Koppitz, M., Pollney, D., Reisswig, C., Rezzolla, L., Thornburg, J., Diener, P., & Schnetter, E., Physical Review Letters 99, 041102.
• Black-hole excision with multiple grid patches
  Thornburg, J., Classical and Quantum Gravity 21, 3665.
• A fast apparent horizon finder for three-dimensional Cartesian grids in numerical relativity
  Thornburg, J., Classical and Quantum Gravity 21, 743.
• New transition between discrete and continuous self-similarity in critical gravitational collapse
  Lechner, C., Thornburg, J., Husa, S., & Aichelburg, P. C., Physical Review D 68, 081501(R).

 http://www.astro.indiana.edu/~jthorn