University of California, Davis, U.S.A.
Research interests.
My research experience has involved investigating the properties of supernovae (Type I, II and SLSNe) and their circumstellar environment. Areas of particular interest are the revealing of evidence of rapid variability and blue bumps on SNe light curves, the photometrically classification of the SNe through light curve fitting and the spectroscopic study of the evolutionary phases of these explosions.
Evidence of rapid variability in SNe light curves
The increasing rate of discovery of bright supernovae several days before their maximum light has opened new horizons on the physics of supernovae, which allow us to investigate the progenitor channels, their circumstellar environment and the nature of their explosions. Even though many supernovae (e.g 2012cg, 2013dy, iPTF14atg, iPTF16abc; Marion et al. 2016, Zheng et al. 2013, Kromer et al. 2016, Miller et al. 2017) have shown peculiar signs in their early light curves and spectra (early blue/UV excess, carbon absorption lines), most photometric surveys study the attitude of supernovae on timescales of days and their intraday behavior remains unknown in the pre- and post- maximum evolutionary stage. For these reasons, obtaining high-cadence observations with the purpose of exploring the short timescale behavior of SNe and searching for evidence of rapid microvariability which is otherwise not probed by the vast majority of photometric surveys of transients is of major importance!
Searching the spectroscopic pattern to divide SLSNe analysing EPESSTO+ spectra
The observations of a new regime of high luminosity explosions led to a new class of supernovae, the so-called superluminous SNe (SLSNe). These sources of unusually high luminosities are characterised by the long duration to peak (70 days), their peak luminosities (-21.5 mag) and integrated luminous energy a few times 10^51 more than any previous SN. Many subdivisions have been proposed such as the prototype PTF12dam and SN2011ke like events or the slowly- and rapidly-declining SLSNe, but none of them has been adopted. Trying to figure out any pattern that will categorise a subdivision to SLSNe class, we are analysing all the EPESSTO+ spectra of SLSNe Type I.
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