Conall Kavanagh

Profile

I am a PhD student at the School of Physics and Astronomy researching the dynamics of accretion discs. This involves the use of numerical and analytical methods to investigate the behaviour of accretion discs including warping and tearing. I worked on Tidal Disruption Events (TDE) with Dr Chris Nixon during my integrated Master’s, specifically looking at how stellar rotation affects the distance at which a star is fully disrupted. It was realised that most partial disruption events involve a star's complete destruction, which subsequently reforms, with two different processes responsible for this reformation. The relationship between stellar rotation and the distance at which any mass is lost from the stellar surface was also determined. Both relationships have important implications for the modelling of TDEs and are vital to understanding a growing number of suspected repeated partial TDEs (where a star on a bound orbit loses mass to the SMBH during multiple encounters). My work makes use of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics code PHANTOM.

Research interests

• Tidal Disruption Events
• Accretion Disc Dynamics

Qualifications

• MPhys, BSc Physics with Astrophysics