Nicole Lloyd-Ronning

Email: lloyd@cita.utoronto.ca

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Research Summary

[ High Energy Astrophysics ]

Nicole Lloyd-Ronning's research interests are focused primarily on understanding the physical processes associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), as well as how GRBs can be used as cosmological tools (e.g. to determine the high redshift star formation rate, probe the epoch of reionization, etc.). She is also interested in other high energy phenomena - particularly, in understanding the physics behind the production of Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters and Anomalous X-ray Pulsars.

Research Projects:
(September 2002 - August 2003)

Jet structure in Gamma Ray Bursts

Nicole Lloyd-Ronning focused most of her research on investigating the jet structure of Gamma-Ray Bursts. With Bing Zhang and Xinyu Dai (Penn State), she explored the possibility that GRBs adhere to a quasi-universal jet structure, in which all GRBs are have approximately the same energy release as a function of jet angle, but the difference in their observed properties is due to different observer viewing angles (or - in other words - orientation of the GRB jet toward the observer). They found that both power-law and Gaussian models for energy as a function of angle can adequately reproduce the observations, and that this quasi-universal picture is indeed a viable model for GRB jets.

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