- Sean McLaughlin
- gravitational lens detector
- Engineering Physics
Describe
your research
experience
Sean's research focuses on developing an automated strong gravitational lens detector. He has been recognized as a Goldwater Scholar for his research.
A technique has been developed that combines new statistical computing techniques with approximations of astronomical models that can find gravitational lenses in large astronomical databases. Strong gravitational lenses are a directly observable consequence of Einstein’s general relativity and are very useful subjects for astronomical study. In a strong gravitational lens the light of a distant, ancient galaxy is bent and refocused toward the earth by a nearby, massive galaxy. Astronomers use them to study dark matter, dark energy, and the limits of gravity. However, finding lenses is difficult because separating the lens from the galaxy that created it is very challenging; their shapes are often blended together. The developed technique works by rapidly fitting the approximate galaxy model to a raw astronomical image. Then, deviations from that model are analyzed as possible gravitational lenses. This program was successful in both finding objects and doing so in an efficient, scalable manner. This combination of techniques can be scaled to the size of future astronomical databases. It will be useful for finding gravitational lenses and also for rapidly modeling large collections of objects.
As one of the recipient's of OUR's inaugural Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (2014), the results of Sean's research can be found here.
