Theory

The theory group at the department of astronomy exists since 2009. It started with the arrival of Dr. Michael Fellhauer in late 2008, the first theoretical astronomer at the department, and his first PhD student Paulina Assmann, starting her thesis in numerical simulations of the formation of dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

In March 2015 Dr. Dominik Schleicher arrived as the second theoretical professor joining the DdeA and its theory group. He brought his expertise in magneto-hydrodynamical simulations into our group.

As of December 2017 Dr. Stefano Bovino joined the Theory Group Concepción, with his expertise in computational astro-chemistry. And in 2019, Dr. Nathan Leigh, who works in gravitational dynamics, joins.

Today, the group consists of four professors, two post-docs and 19 students. We are one of the largest groups at the DdeA and most likely the largest theory group in Chile. In the 10 years of existence the theory group published about 100 articles in refereed journals and saw the finalisation of 1 PhD, 7 Magister and 9 titulo theses. We acquired 10 FONDECYT projects, 2 post-doc position grants, a Chilean-German cooperation project from CONICYT, a big Quimal grant for the largest shared memory computer in Chile, several small grants and are part of CATA. Most recently Prof. Schleicher won an Anillo grant.

The group has its own super-computer Kultrun (website). It is a modern hybrid cluster with an Intel Xeon Gold cluster of 13 nodes and 416 cores and an AMD node with 32 cores. The heart of Kultrun is "Ada Lovelace" a shared memory machine with Intel Xeon Platinum CPUs, 224 cores and 3TB RAM. Ada Lovelace is the largest and fastest shared memory machine in the whole of Chile.

Dr. D. Schleicher, of our group, is PI in the Anillo ACT172033 "Formation and Growth of Supermassive Black Holes".

For more information please visit our group website .