Andrew R Zentner

  • Professor
314 Allen Hall

Research

I am a theorist with research interests that lie within cosmology, defined rather broadly. I strive to maintain a close connection with observation in large part because the amount and discriminating power of observational data is expanding rapidly and will continue to expand into the next decade. My aim is to make predictions that are unique and testable in the near term and to facilitate comparisons with data that are robust and maximize the discriminating power of the data. In many cases, this leads to studies of the particular capabilities of forthcoming instruments to study any variety of phenomena, from dark energy evolution to galaxy formation processes. My interests range throughout a broad cross section of cosmology to encompass galaxy formation, the phenomenology and identification of the dark matter and dark energy, and astrophysical limits on fundamental physics.

My group at the University of Pittsburgh is active and growing. I currently work with four graduate students:  Andrew Hearin, Mei-Yu Wang, Advait Salgarkar, and Shailendra Vikas.  I recently hired Christopher Purcell as a postdoctoral research associate.  Two undergraduate students are also involved in my group's research, Rebecca Reesman and Katlyn Daniluk. My research group is funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy.

My publications can be obtained from any of the arXiv, SPIRES , and the NASA Astrophysics Data System . You can find out moreabout my work from my personal web page, here.

I joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in the Fall of 2007. Prior to entering into theoretical cosmology, I received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. I received my Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2003 under the direction of Professor Terry Walker. I was then an Institute Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago from Fall 2003 until Fall 2006. I was a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute and the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago from Fall 2006 until moving to the University of Pittsburgh.

I maintain a wiki page to archive some of the work done by the astrophysics and cosmology group at the University of Pittsburgh. You can view our University of Pittsburgh google calendar to keep up with astrophysics and cosmology events in our group and throughout Pittsburgh. You can check my scheduled meetings and availability here.

I have organized and will chair a special session on cosmology at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Pittsburgh. The details can be found at the APS web site .I am also interested and active in community education and outreach projects and encourage interested parties to contact me directly regarding such projects.

Selected Publications

  • A General Study of the Influence of Catastrophic Photometric Redshift Errors on Cosmology with Cosmic Shear Tomography,
    Andrew P. Hearin, Andrew R. Zentner, Zhaoming Ma, and Dragan Huterer
    The Astrophys. J., 720, 1351, 2010
    On the arXiv
  • High-Energy Neutrinos from Dark Matter Particle Self-Capture within the Sun,
    Andrew R. Zentner
    Phys. Rev. D, 80, 063501, 2009
    On the arXiv
  • The Influence of Galaxy Formation Physics on Weak Lensing Tests of General Relativity,
    Andrew P. Hearin and Andrew R. Zentner ,
    J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 2009-04 , 032, 2009
    On the ArXiv
  • Cold Dark Matter Substructure and Galactic Disks I: Morphological Signatures of Hierarchical Satellite Accretion,
    Stelios Kazantzidis, James S. Bullock, Andrew R. Zentner, Andrey V. Kravtsov, and Leonidas A. Moustakas
    The Astrophysical Journal, In Press, 2008
    On the arXiv
  • Biases in the Gravitational Lens Population Induced by Halo and Galaxy Triaxiality,
    Eduardo Rozo, Jacqueline Chen, and Andrew R. Zentner,
    Accepted for Publication in The Astrophysical Journal, 2008
    On the arXiv
  • Merger Histories of Galaxy Halos and Implications for Disk Survival,
    Kyle R. Stewart, James S. Bullock, Risa H. Wechsler, Ariyeh H. Maller, Andrew R. Zentner,
    The Astrophysical Journal, 683, 597, 2008
  • Self Calibration of Tomographic Weak Lensing for the Physics of Baryons to Constrain Dark Energy
    Andrew R. Zentner , Douglas H, Rudd, and Wayne Hu
    Physical Review D, 77, 043507, 2008
    On the arXiv
  • Effects of Baryons and Dissipation on the Matter Power Spectrum
    Douglas H. Rudd, Andrew R. Zentner, and Andrey V. Kravtsov
    The Astrophysical Journal, 672, 19, 2007
    On the arXiv
  • The Excursion Set Theory of Halo Mass Functions, Halo Clustering, and Halo Growth
    Andrew R. Zentner
    International Journal of Modern Physics D, 16, 763, 2007
  • The Dependence of Halo Clustering on Halo Formation History, Concentration, and Occupation
    Risa H. Wechsler, Andrew R. Zentner, James S. Bullock, and Andrey V. Kravtsov
    The Astrophysical Journal, 652, 71, 2006
  • Testing Models of Supermassive Black Hole Seed Formation through Gravity Waves
    Savvas M. Koushiappas and Andrew R. Zentner
    The Astrophysical Journal, 639, 7, 2006
  • New Signature of Dark Matter Annihilations: Gamma-rays from Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
    Gianfranco Bertone, Andrew R. Zentner, and Joseph Silk
    Physical Review D, 72, 103517, 2005
  • The Anisotropic Distribution of Galactic Satellites
    Andrew R. Zentner, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Oleg Y. Gnedin, and Anatoly A. Klypin
    The Astrophysical Journal, 629, 219, 2005
  • The Physics of Galaxy Clustering I: A Model for Subhalo Populations
    Andrew R. Zentner, Andreas A. Berlind, James S. Bullock, Andrey V. Kravtsov, and Risa H. Wechsler
    The Astrophysical Journal, 624, 505, 2005
  • The Effect of Gas Cooling on the Shapes of Dark Matter Halos
    Stelios Kazantzidis, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Andrew R. Zentner, Brandon Allgood, Daisuke Nagai, and Ben Moore
    The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 611, 73, 2004
  • The Observability of Gamma-rays from Neutralino Annihilation in the Milky Way Substructure
    Savvas M. Koushiappas, Andrew R. Zentner, and Terrence P. Walker
    Physical Review D, 69, 043501, 2004
  • Halo Substructure and the Power Spectrum
    Andrew R. Zentner and James S. Bullock
    The Astrophysical Journal, 598, 49, 2003
  • Inflation, Cold Dark Matter, and the Central Densities Problem
    Andrew R. Zentner and James S. Bullock
    Physical Review D, 66, 043003, 2002
  • Constraints on the Cosmological Relativistic Energy Density
    Andrew R. Zentner and Terry P. Walker
    Physical Review D, 65, 063506, 2002

Graduate Advisor

Nathan Michael Herring
Cameron Mahoney
Alan Pearl
Troy Raen
Kuan Wang