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Cygnus-XI HMXRB

Illustration of Cygnus-X1, a stellar-mass black hole pulling apart its binary companion, a high-mass blue star. Material from stellar winds forms a disk that rotates around the black hole before falling into it or being redirected away from the black hole in the form of powerful jets. It's cool stuff!

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Katherine Savard

Grad Student

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics
katherine.savard@physics.ox.ac.uk
  • About
  • Publications

Greetings! I'm a PhD student here at the University of Oxford studying under the supervision of Rob Fender, Ian Heywood and James Matthews.

I am interested in the extremes of our universe, particularly black holes and their surrounding environments. Currently, I am researching jet outflows from X-ray binaries through numerical simulations and radio observations with the MeerKAT telescope. I run relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of 'blobs' of material launched from close to the black hole which propagate through space very close to the speed of light. Through this, I am working to understand the nature and energy budget of jets from X-ray binaries, as well as some of the fun and strange physics involved when these relativistic blobs disrupt in the interstellar medium. 

In addition to this, I am developing software to convert results from these simulations (or general simulation of radio-emitting things in the sky) into realistic predicted images from radio telescopes, in order to bridge the gap between simulations and observations. Through this, we can learn about how our simulations compare to real data, as well as understand deeply the effects of observing something with a radio telescope and how this might impact your science conclusions!

Alongside this, I'm passionate about outreach and equity in STEM, and this is integral to all my work. 

Research interests

Black Holes
X-ray Binaries
Relativistic jets
Radio Astronomy
Cosmic Rays
Particle Acceleration
Relativistic Hydrodynamics

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