You can find an up-to-date list of publication in my CV. Here I comment my papers one by one. What was the point of each paper and my contribution to it?
Disruption of Hierarchical Clustering in the Vela OB2 Complex and the Cluster Pair Collinder 135 and UBC7 with Gaia EDR3: Evidence of Supernova Quenching Pang, X., et al. 2021
Finding lots of substructure in Gaia data in the Vela complex. This is part of the StarGO series, which uses a self-organizing map (a kind of neural network) to find groups of stars in phase space. My contribution is the reconstruction of the three-dimensional shape of the clusters using a simple Bayesian code.
Seeing the forest for the trees: hierarchical generative models for star clusters from hydro-dynamical simulationsTorniamenti, S., et al. 2021
We came up with a completely new method to produce new star clusters (sets of positions, velocities, and masses of stars) given one in input. The new star clusters share the hierarchically subclustered structure of the original one, which is generated by a full hydrodynamical simulation of star formation. This is ideal to quickly generate realistic initial conditions for direct N-body simulations.
Intermediate mass black holes from stellar mergers in young star clustersDi Carlo, U. N., et al. 2021
State-of-the-art simulations N-body simulations with single and binary stellar evolution trace the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in young star clusters. Great job Ugo! My contribution to this paper was Appendix A, where we attempt to compare the high mass tails of the IMBH distributions at different metallicities, basically trying to understand whether the masses of the heaviest IMBHs produced at different metallicity are different. A tricky statistical question.
3D Morphology of Open Clusters in the Solar Neighborhood with Gaia EDR 3: Its Relation to Cluster DynamicsPang, X., et al. 2021
XiaoYing and her group used a simple Bayesian code I wrote to reconstruct the three-dimensional shape of quite a few star clusters from Gaia data.
Introducing a new multi-particle collision method for the evolution of dense stellar systems. Crash-test N-body simulationsDi Cintio, P., et al. 2021
Pierfrancesco decided to bring a simulation method from the mesoscale world (colloids and that kind of stuff) to astronomy. We use it to simulate star clusters quickly (with NlogNscaling) and accurately. Will it compete with Montecarlo/Fokker-Plank codes?
The impact of binaries on the evolution of star clusters from turbulent molecular cloudsTorniamenti, S., et al. 2021
Binary stars can either break up, absorbing energy, or become more and more bound, releasing energy. Either way they affect the dynamical evolution of their host star cluster. Here Stefano run state-of-the-art direct N-body simulations on initial conditions from hydro-simulations of star formation in embedded clusters to constrain the effects of binaries.
Interpreting automatic AGN classifiers with saliency mapsPeruzzi, T., et al. 2021
What is the use of classifying active galactic nuclei into Type 1, Type 2, etc. with an automatic machine learning model if we do not understand how the model works under the hood? Here we peer inside using ML interpretability tools and find that our classifier thinks in a very similar way to a human expert. Just orders of magnitude faster.
Introducing a new multi-particle collision method for the evolution of dense stellar systemsII. Core collapseDi Cintio, P., et al. 2021
Pierfrancesco brought this fancy simulation method from the mesoscale world (colloids and the like) to us astro people. We used it to simulate star clusters in a previous paper. Here we use it to simulate the core collapse phase of star clusters. We find out that it works more or less as expected, despite the fact that, for now, our code lacks a crucial ingredient: binary stars.
Measuring the spectral index of turbulent gas with deep learning from projected density mapsTrevisan, P., et al. 2020
Alessandro run some hydro-simulations and converted them into images. We trained a neural net to predict one parameter of the simulations from the raw images. It works, and it still works even if we blur or distort the images.
Binary black holes in young star clusters: the impact of metallicityDi Carlo, U. N., et al. 2020
Ugo run a lot of state-of-the-art simulations with stellar evolution (both binary and single) and found that the metallicity of a star cluster has a strong effect of binary black hole formation. You need to get the metallicity right to get the right black holes.
Different Fates of Young Star Clusters after Gas ExpulsionPang, X., et al. 2020
Using a Bayesian code I wrote for her, XiaoYing reconstructed the three-dimensional shape of some star clusters. One appears bound, the other seems doomed: it will dissolve quickly. This is likely due to the dynamical effect of gas expulsion.
Taking apart the dynamical clock. Fat-tailed dynamical kicks shape the blue straggler star bimodality Pasquato, M., et al. 2020
Here we show that if you want a radially bimodal distribution of blue stragglers in a star cluster, and you want it to evolve in the way it has to evolve to make Ferraro 2012’s paper correct, you need to model the distribution of the N-body kicks correctly. It is a fat tailed distribution and using a Gaussian just won’t cut it.
Among other things this result means that “shut up and simulate” is not always a good idea.
An astrophysically motivated ranking criterion for low-latency electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational wave eventsArtale, M. C., et al. 2020
Where should we point our (electromagnetic) telescopes to spot the counterpart to a recent GW event? Some guidance from astrophysics in the form of models of star clusters painted over cosmology: look at the biggest galaxy first.
Further Properties of the Dynamical Clock A+ Indicator in a Toy Model of Pure Dynamical FrictionPasquato, M. 2020
Analytical Solutions for the Dynamical Clock A+ Indicator in a Toy Model of Pure Dynamical FrictionPasquato, M. 2020
These two papers present some analytical results (pen-and-paper) on how the A+ indicator of mass segregation evolves in a very idealized scenario. It is monotone with time and convex. This agrees very well with
Mass and star formation rate of the host galaxies of compact binary mergers across cosmic timeArtale, M. C., et al. 2020
Who are the galaxies that host GW events from compact object mergers? We found out by combining state-of-the-art cosmological simulations with state-of-the-art star cluster simulations.
Clustering clusters: unsupervised machine learning on globular cluster structural parametersPasquato, M., et al. 2019
There are two (disk/halo) or three (disk/thick-disk/halo) groups of globular clusters. I confirm this quantitatively with clustering methods. I also measure how much any given cluster is associated to its parent group.
Quasi-experimental Approach to Open Cluster DynamicsPasquato, M., et al. 2019
This is just a research note (not refereed) but it is really cool: it is the first time ever that the quasi-experimental method of regression discontinuity design, which is widespread in econometrics and other observational sciences, is applied to astronomy.
Radial Dependence of the Proto-globular Cluster Contribution to the Milky Way Formation Chung, C., et al. 2019
Oh, this was fun. I wanted to run direct N-body simulations for this one, but at the last minute I found out I did not have access to the hardware I needed. Well, I cobbled together a simple code that integrates orbits in a potential plus Coriolis forces due to rotating around the Galaxy. It is an implementation of the Quinn 2010 algorithm for solving the Hill problem. This way we could measure how many first-generation and second-generation stars are lost by a star cluster to Galactic tides over the course of its life.
Merging black holes in young star clustersDi Carlo, U. N., et al. 2019
Extended halo of NGC 2682 (M 67) from Gaia DR2Carrera, R., et al. 2019
Multiple Stellar Populations in NGC 2808: a Case Study for Cluster AnalysisPasquato, M., et al. 2019
This was rejected by MNRAS and by A&A.
Finding black holes with black boxes – using machine learning to identify globular clusters with black hole subsystems Askar, A., et al. 2019
Weighing the IMBH candidate CO-0.40-0.22* in the Galactic Centre Ballone, A., et al. 2018
Blue Straggler Bimodality: A Brownian Motion Model Pasquato, M., et al. 2018
Science with e-ASTROGAM. A space mission for MeV-GeV gamma-ray astrophysics de Angelis, A., et al. 2018
Reversed Trend of Radial Distribution of Subpopulations in the Globular Clusters NGC 362 and NGC 6723 Lim, D., et al. 2016
Globular Clusters Hosting Intermediate-Mass Black Holes: No Mass-Segregation Based Candidates Pasquato, M., et al. 2016
Merged or monolithic? Using machine-learning to reconstruct the dynamical history of simulated star clusters Pasquato, M., et al. 2016
On the use of the number count of blue horizontal branch stars to infer the dominant building blocks of the Milky Way halo Chung, C., et al. 2016
Probing the Role of Dynamical Friction in Shaping the BSS Radial Distribution. I. Semi-analytical Models and Preliminary N-body Simulations Miocchi, P., et al. 2015
Stellar Encounter Driven Red-giant Star Mass Loss in Globular Clusters Pasquato, M., et al. 2014
Star Count Density Profiles and Structural Parameters of 26 Galactic Globular Clusters Miocchi, P., et al. 2013
Core collapse and horizontal-branch morphology in Galactic globular clusters Pasquato, M., et al. 2013
Dynamical age differences among coeval star clusters as revealed by blue stragglers Ferraro, F. R., et al. 2012
The Binary Fraction in the Globular Cluster M10 (NGC 6254): Comparing Core and Outer Regions Dalessandro, E., et al. 2011
Croatian Black Hole School 2010 lecture notes on IMBHs in GCs Pasquato, M. 2010
The Dynamical State of the Globular Cluster M10 (NGC 6254) Beccari, G., et al. 2010
On the fundamental line of galactic and extragalactic globular clusters Pasquato, M., et al. 2010
Looking for Intermediate Mass Black Holes in GCs: the mass-segregation method. Pasquato, M. 2010
Tidal Disruption, Global Mass Function, and Structural Parameter Evolution in Star Clusters Trenti, M., et al. 2010
Mass Segregation in NGC 2298: Limits on the Presence of an Intermediate Mass Black Hole Pasquato, M., et al. 2009
What Mass Segregation in NGC 2298 Says About the Presence of an IMBH Gill, M., et al. 2009
On the Fundamental Plane of the Galactic globular cluster system Pasquato, M., et al. 2008