Research
My research aims at studying short gamma-ray-bursts (GRBs) and their enigmatic formation through the lens of their host galaxies. See below for a more detailed explanation of my research and why studying these mysterious transients and their environments is so fascinating and crucial for fully understanding their progenitor!
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I am also broadly interested in how we can use host galaxies of different astrophysical transient events to characterize their origins!
Research Summary
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Short GRBs are some of the most luminous extra-galactic explosions in the universe. They only emit gamma-rays for less than 2 seconds and have very quickly fading afterglows, but in that time, they release a great amount of energy. Studying their host galaxies is important because we can determine the redshifts of these events, which set their energy scales, and learn about the environmental factors that their progenitor systems can form in. From the LIGO/Virgo detected GW170817 event, a binary neutron star merger which had an electromagnetic counterpart in the form of a short GRB, we now know that short GRBs are derived from neutron star mergers and are connected to these kinds of events occurring in the local universe. With this in mind, we can also use the host galaxies of short GRBs to better predict the kinds of galaxies that can host gravitational wave detected events and inform follow-up searches.
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BRIGHT
The Broad-band Repository for Investigating Gamma-ray Burst Host Traits (BRIGHT) is the largest short GRB host galaxy catalogue to date. On this website, we include all available observations for a short GRB host and its inferred stellar population properties. Data is now publicly available!
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Telescopes
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My research depends on the constant flow of data from large telescopes. I currently collect a majority of data from the MMT Observatory in Arizona, The Twin Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Chile.
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I am the PI for host observations in the MMT program (semesters 21B, 22A, 22B, 23A) and the classical Keck program for Northwestern transient observers (semesters 22B, 23A).
Contact
Information
Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208, USA
anyanugent2023[at]u.northwestern.edu
