Jarrett L. Johnson

News feed

​

In June 2023 I presented our work on the formation of Population III stars in the vicinity of high-redshift active galactic nuclei (AGN) at the First Light meeting in Cambridge, MA.  This was timely, given the detection of a Population III candidate near an AGN at z = 10.6 by the James Webb Space Telescope.

​

In June 2023 we began working with a third student, Parker Willis, to model black hole growth and Population III star formation using the Enzo code.

​

In June 2023 I presented our work on super-Eddington black hole growth at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Albuquerque, NM.

​

In June 2022 we began working with two students, Ethan Fisk and Marian Stradling, to model black hole growth using the Enzo code.

​

In September 2021 Phoebe Upton Sanderbeck joined our astrophysics research group as a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow.

​

In December 2020 I presented a strategy to search for the brightest Population III star clusters and direct collapse black holes at the SAZERAC Quasars during Reionization virtual conference.

​

In February 2020 I began a new position as the manager of the Capabilities for Nuclear Intelligence program at LANL.

​

In April 2019 I presented a review of black hole formation mechanisms at the Accretion Signatures of the Earliest Black Holes conference at Princeton University.

​

In March 2019 I presented our work on the formation of extreme Population III starbursts at the Into the Starlight conference at the Aspen Center for Physics.

​

In February 2018 I presented our work on black hole formation and Population III star formation at the Cosmological Signals conference at the  Aspen Center for Physics.

​

In September 2017 I presented our work on the formation and fate of Population III stars at the IAP in Paris, France.

​

In August 2017 I presented our work on the formation of the first quasars at the Challenges in Galaxy Evolution conference in Florence, Italy.

​

In March 2017 our work on simulating the formation of the first quasars was featured in space.com, New Scientist magazine, and on the LANL website.

​

In March 2017 I delivered a keynote address to the Baldwin Education Foundation as the 2017 Distinguished Alum.

​

In the summer of 2017 Aycin Aykutalp will join our group studying the growth of the first black holes.

​

In November 2016 I presented our work on the formation of the first black holes at the New Mexico Symposium.

​

In July 2016 we received funding for a 3-year Laboratory Directed R&D Exploratory Research project to model multi-scale accretion onto black holes.

​

In the summer of 2016 I will give talks at ICG, Portsmouth and at the First Stars V conference on the brightest primordial sources, Population III galaixes and accreting black holes.

​

In March 2016  I presented our recent work on the growth of the first black holes at the Aspen Center for Physics.

 

In December 2015 our work on the first planets was mentioned on space.com.

 

In October 2015 I presented my work on the chemical signatures of the first stars for a FSU Physics Skype Seminar. 

 

In October 2015 my work on the chemical signatures of the first stars was covered in Science News magazine.

 

I attended the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in June 2015.

 

I attended the South by High Redshift conference in April 2015.

 

I presented my work on the search for Population III stars at the Harvard ITC in March 2015.

 

In September 2014 Ken Chen discussed our recent work on supermassive supernovae in a Berkeley Lab article.

 

In August 2014 I attended a conference at LANL focusing on Stirling Colgate's legacy in astrophysics.

 

In July 2014 Brandon Wiggins delivered a TEDx talk at LANL covering our recent work on supermassive supernovae.

 

In June 2014 I presented our recent research on black hole formation during reionization at the Physics of First Star and Galaxy Formation conference in Edinburgh, UK.

 

In June 2014 I made a brief appearance in Sky and Telescope magazine.

 

In March 2014 I joined fellow LANL scientists in presenting our recent work at a WWG meeting.

 

In November 2013 our recent work on supermassive supernovae was featured as a research highlight in Nature.

 

Starting in August 2013 I will begin TITANS, which was previously featured in an article in Wired magazine.

 

In June 2013 our simulations of supermassive supernovae were featured in New Scientist and as a LANL news release.

 

In May 2013 I became a Staff Scientist in the X Theoretical Division at LANL.

 

In March 2013 our work on supermassive stars was featured in the LANL science and technology magazine 1663.

 

In February 2013 our work on black hole formation in the early universe was discussed in Spektrum magazine (click here for a rough English translation of the article).

 

Over the summer of 2013 I gave invited talks on our work on the seeds of supermassive black holes at the Cosmic Dawn at Ringberg conference in Tegernsee, Germany, and at the Massive Black Holes conference at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California.

 

In October 2012 I gave a talk on my work with Hui Li on the first planets at the University of New Mexico. See the talk slides here.

 

In August 2012 our work on the growth of the first black holes was featured in a review article in Science magazine.

 

In June 2012 I presented our work on supermassive stars as the seeds of supermassive black holes at the LANL Postdoc Research Day. 

 

In June 2012 I presented our work on the first planets at the Origins of Stars and their Planetary Systems conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

 

In May 2012 I presented our work on the formation of supermassive stars and black holes at the First Stars IV conference in Kyoto, Japan. 

 

In April 2012 our black holes research group at LANL received a large allocation of high performance computing time to carry out simulations of the formation and growth of early black holes.

 

In April 2012 our work on the critical metallicity for planet formation was reviewed in Astrobiology magazine. It was also recently featured in a LANL news release, as well as on msnbc.com and space.com.

 

In January 2012 I presented our research on supermassive star formation at the 219th AAS meeting in Austin, TX.

 

I have contributed a chapter on the theory of the formation of the first galaxies to an upcoming book in the Springer/Astrophysics and Space Science Library series. A preprint of the chapter is available here.

 

In June 2011 I participated in the First Galaxies workshop organized by our research group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE).

 

In July 2010 I presented our work on early black holes at the workshop What drives the growth of black holes? at Durham University in England. See the review of the workshop here.

 

In March 2010 I presented at the The First Stars and Galaxies conference at the University of Texas at Austin. 

 

Since the fall of 2009 I have been collaborating with other members of the Theoretical Modeling of Cosmic Structures group at MPE to study the effects of radiation emitted by the first generations of stars in the First Billion Years project.

 

In May 2009 I completed my Ph.D. in Astronomy at UT Austin, where I was a member of the new Texas Cosmology Center.

 

In August 2008 our simulation of radiation from the first stars appeared in the New York Times.

 

In December 2007 our work on Population III star formation in the assembly of the first galaxies was featured in New Scientist.

​