About Me
Education:
University of Pittsburgh
PhD in progress
University of Oklahoma
2020 - B.S. Astrophysics, B.S. Mathematics, summa cum laude
Research Interests:
I currently work under Dr. John Hillier (website), studying supernovae using the radiative transfer code CMFGEN. I am currently working on implementing molecular chemistry into the code to study the effects of carbon monoxide formation in supernova ejecta.
As an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, I worked with Dr. Karen Leighly, developing a machine learning algorithm (a variational autoencoder) to study the variations in emission line features of a sample of quasar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Publications:
View my papers on ADS
My poster from the 2019 Astroinformatics Conference at California Institute of Technology: Astroinformatics Poster
My poster from the 236th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (virtual, June 2020): AAS Poster
Research
Molecular Processes in Supernovae
I am currently investigating the properties of carbon monoxide emission in core-collapse supernovae. Because it has a large number of low-lying, easily-excited energy states, CO can be an efficient coolant if it is able to form in supernova ejecta. I use the radiative transfer code CMFGEN (originally created by Dr. D. John Hillier) to simulate the formation, destruction, and emission from carbon monoxide from first principles. The nature of the CO cooling function is more complicated than many atomic cooling processes, and can result in numerical issues like multiple solutions. I am investigating the nature of CO cooling in more detail now.
An example of the effect of CO cooling on emergent spectra: in this plot, the model including CO is several thousand degrees cooler, causing many optical lines to be weakened.
Publications:
View my papers on ADS
My poster from the 2019 Astroinformatics Conference at California Institute of Technology: Astroinformatics Poster
And from the 236th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (virtual, June 2020): AAS Poster
Contact
Email:
collin.mcleod@pitt.edu
Useful Links
Here are a few internet links which I find useful in my research and recreation: