Phone: (773) 702-6684
Location: LASR 225
Email: surhudkicp.uchicago.edu
WWW: Web Site

Research Interests: Structures in the Universe; Theory

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and part of the Computational Astrophysics Group of Andrey Kravtsov.

Prior to that, I was in the Theory group of the Galaxies and Cosmology section at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. I worked with Dr. Frank van den Bosch and my phd thesis focussed on understanding the Galaxy-Dark Matter Connection.

Halo Mass-Luminosity Relation of Central Galaxies in SDSS
According to our current understanding, galaxies are believed to reside in extended dark matter haloes. The properties of a dark matter halo, in particular its mass, shapes the properties of the galaxy that forms at its center. I am interested in the scaling relations between galaxy properties and halo mass. I have investigated the halo mass-luminosity relationship of galaxies. The kinematics of satellite galaxies can be used to infer the mass of the halo of a galaxy. I have developed methods to reliably obtain the mean and the scatter of the halo mass-luminosity relation of galaxies and applied it to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Cosmic Transparency
The Universe is remarkably transparent. Photons from distant cosmic objects travel to us, uninhibited, despite encountering considerable columns of dark matter, hydrogen plasma, hydrogen gas and dust. In a research project, in collaboration with David Hogg and Jo Bovy, we recently obtained a quantitative measure of the transparency of the Universe by testing the Etherington relation using current SNeIa and Baryon acoustic feature measurements.

Ongoing Scientific Projects:

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)

• Surhud More awarded an Otto-Hahn Medal, KICP News

• KICP Postdocs Symposium, Winter 2012 Postdocs Symposium
• KICP Postdocs Symposium, Spring 2011 Postdocs Symposium
• KICP Workshop, 10th Great Lakes Cosmology Workshop (organizer)
• KICP Postdocs Symposium, Winter 2010 Postdocs Symposium

2012 | 2011 | 2010


Latest Journal Publications

1. "The Galaxy-Dark Matter Connection: A Cosmological Perspective", arXiv:1204.0786 (Apr 2012)
2. "The Ysz--Yx Scaling Relation as Determined from Planck and Chandra", arXiv:1202.2150 (Feb 2012)
3. "How Accurate is Our Knowledge of the Galaxy Bias?", The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 741, Issue 1, article id. 19 (2011) (Nov 2011)
4. "Dark halo response and the stellar initial mass function in early-type and late-type galaxies", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 416, Issue 1, pp. 322-345 (Sep 2011)
5. "The Overdensity and Masses of the Friends-of-friends Halos and Universality of Halo Mass Function", The Astrophysical Journal Supplement, Volume 195, Issue 1, article id. 4 (2011) (Jul 2011)
6. "Gravitational Lens Candidates in the E-CDFS", The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 734, Issue 1, article id. 69 (2011) (Jun 2011)
7. "Are brightest halo galaxies central galaxies?", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 410, Issue 1, pp. 417-431 (Jan 2011)
8. "Satellite kinematics - III. Halo masses of central galaxies in SDSS", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 410, Issue 1, pp. 210-226 (Jan 2011)
9. "The kinematic connection between galaxies and dark matter haloes", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 407, Issue 1, pp. 2-16 (Sep 2010)

Past Visitors:

1. Michael Cooper, University of California, Irvine (2011)
2. Matt Kistler, California Institute of Technology (2011)
3. Jeffrey Kubo, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (2011)
4. Frank van den Bosch, Astronomy Department, Yale University (2011)
5. Renee Hlozek, University of Oxford (2010)
6. Jonathan Pritchard, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2010)