Welcome to my homepage
My name is Steven Diehl and I am a computational astrophysicist. I completed my PhD in June 2006 at Ohio University. Since then, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Nuclear & Particle Physics, Astrophysics & Cosmology Group (T-2) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, NM, USA. This new group has recently (Oct. 2008) been formed out of the previous Theoretical Astrophysics Group (T-6), Elementary Particles and Field Theory (T-8) and the Nuclear Physics Group (T-16).
My research interests are generally in the area of computational astrophysics. Feel free to browse the research section for a detailed overview of the projects I am currently involved in. For a current CV and some more personal information about myself and my family, just click on "About Me". The "Software" section contains some publicly available software products that I have written.
I hope you find any of the material presented on this webpage useful, or at least enjoy reading it.
Steven
12/20/2008
News
T-Division Reorganization
The Theoretical Astrophysics Group (T-6) has now been merged with Elementary Particles and Field Theory (T-8) and the Nuclear Physics Group (T-16), to form the new Nuclear & Particle Physics, Astrophysics & Cosmology Group, which is now designated "T-2".
10/01/2008
ESO Press Release about a tight White Dwarf - Brown Dwarf Binary
Maxted et al. recently discovered the existence of an extremely tight binary star system involving a White Dwarf (WD) and a Brown Dwarf (BD), with a binary separation of only 0.65 solar radii. This WD is believed to be the remnant of a 0.8-1.2 Msun Red Giant, which has lost its hydrogen envelope due to the interaction with its BD companion. In order to create such a tight WD-BD binary, the Brown Dwarf must have formed a "Common Envelope" system with the Red Giant, transferring energy and angular momentum to the Red Giant's hydrogen envelope. To study the feasability of creating such a binary system through a common envelope phase, we have produced Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of such a merger. Have a look at the ESO press release for more details or go directly to the description of our merger simulations. This story has been picked up by various other magazines as well.
08/20/2006
Postdoc Position in Los Alamos National Laboratory
I have finished my PhD work under Tom Statler at Ohio University, and am now a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Theoretical Astrophysics Division (T-6) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. Under the supervision of Chris Fryer, I am now working on SPH simulations of stellar mergers and common envelopes, as well as elliptical galaxies AGN feedback and merger.
08/20/2006
Official OU thesis template for download
In cooperation with the Ohio University Electronic Theses and Dissertation department (ETD), I created a LaTeX template to be used for theses and dissertations, as well as a guide on how to use it. You can download both here.
02/21/2006
NASA Headquarters Press Release
Have a look at the NASA
Headquarters and
Chandra
press releases about our latest discovery with the Chandra X-ray
satellite! In a
01/10/2006
Adaptive Binning
Tom Statler and I have developed an adaptive binning method called "WVT binning" (astro-ph/0512074) that is applicable to X-ray intensity images, hardness ratio maps and temperature maps. The procedure is written in IDL and publicly available under -> Software -> WVT Binning.
12/20/2005
