Xinyu’s research focuses on two different aspects of theoretical astrophysics: high energy astrophysics and cosmology. He is particularly interested in the physical mechanisms behind various astrophysical phenomena.At CITA, Xinyu has been working on the astrophysics of compact objects, especially neutron stars and magnetars where strong magnetic fields, outflow and neutrinos can lead to new physics and observational signatures. Together with his collaborators, he proposed a new efficient mechanism of dissipating magnetic energy through the collision of Alfven waves. He also performed the simulation of neutron star post-merger disk to study the effect of neutrino fast flavour conversion triggered by the neutrino self-interaction. Such mechanism is found to boost the lanthanide abundances of the r-process nucleosynthesis. Additionally, he demonstrated that strong outflow from compact objects can accelerate the compact object, a new phenomena named as negative dynamical friction.
Apart from that, Xinyu is also interested in the cosmology with Fuzzy Dark Matter, a new dark matter model described a complex scalar field of ultralight bosons. He developed a numerical code and employed it to study the novel small-scale structure from the interference of the scalar field, including soliton cores, vortex lines and filaments. Future observations or non-detections of these small-scale structures may serve to constrain the fuzzy dark matter model.
Before coming to CITA, Xinyu received his PhD in physics from Columbia University in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Andrei Beloborodov and worked with Prof. Yuri Levin. Both professors are former CITAzens and recipients of the Beatrice and Vincent Tremaine Fellowship.