August E. (Prof. Gus) Evrard

what I do- theoretical astrophysics computational cosmology PhD, physics 1986 suny-stony brook

to reach me- e-mail: evrard_at_umich_dot_edu phone: (734) 764-4366 fax: (734) 936-1817 office: 3245 Randall Lab Addition

snail- Department of Physics 450 Church St. University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 USA

Here's my curriculum vitae (March 2008).

Research

Computational Cosmology

Within the broad scope of cosmology, the science of the universe, the role of a computational cosmologist is to create high-fidelity numerical simulations of structures in the cosmos. In this context, the term `structures' refers to self-gravitating, quasi-equilibrium objects that can range in scale from a globular star cluster with a few million stars through galaxies, like our Milky Way, with tens of billions of stars, on up to the great clusters of galaxies that contain many hundreds of large galaxies like our Milky Way. The ultimate purpose of this work is to produce a deeper understanding of our origins in the physical cosmos.

Detailed comparisons of the simulations with a wide variety of observations in the real sky has broad implications for astrophysics and cosmology. At a basic level, such comparisons help unravel the complex astrophysical processes that affect the visible matter components of the universe (stars in galaxies and plasma both within and between them). The improved astrophysical understanding allows better use of large-scale, statistical surveys of galaxies and clusters of galaxies to put constraints on models that describe gravity and the Big Bang. In particular, much current effort is focused on assessing the qualities of dark matter and dark energy. These two mysterious substances account for roughly 95 percent of the present mass-energy density of our universe, yet their relationships to known fundamental physical quantities (particles and fields) remains highly uncertain.

Much of my computational research involves collaboration with members of the international Virgo Consortium.

On the observational side, I am part of Michigan's team involved with the Dark Energy Survey and I am also involved with Tim McKay in cluster finding projects using the Sloan Digitial Sky Survey.

Data archives from simulations of clusters are being developed at the Virtual Cluster Exploratory (VCE).

Publications

refereed publication search (from NASA's ADS service)

Funding for this research is provided by US taxpayers through peer reviewed proposals to NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Teaching

In Fall 07 term, I'm lecturing Introductory Mechanics (Phys 140). CTools site for P140 F07.

Feel free to visit my entry in ratemyprofessors.com.