Desmond Dsouza
I am a Doctoral candidate in the Stellar Physics and Exoplanets group at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP), Potsdam. My research looks for the variability of magnetic activity in co-eval stars.
About my work.
Stars as big as our Sun and smaller than the Sun have strong magnetic fields that cause spatial and temporal changes on their surface such as starspots and faculae. This phenomenon is called magnetic activity.
Older stars have low magnetic activity when compared to younger stars. My study takes a sample of stars with the same age and similar masses and checks how different the magnetic activity is between these stars.
Understanding the evolutionary scatter of magnetic activity helps better understand the conditions for the habitability in exoplanets. Stars with high activity emit strong UV and X-rays that can lead to evaporation of exoplanet atmospheres. However, this radiation is also considered to be essential for the evolution of life. A balance of this exposure is postulated to be the best-case scenario for life to evolve. My study helps create upper and lower limits to the magnetic activity evolution in Giga year timescales.
Recent publications
Click here to see recent publications and collaborations.
My research group
The Stellar Physics and Exoplanet research group at the AIP is headed by Prof. Dr. Katja Poppenhäger.
Connect with me
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Current work email: ddsouza ( $ ) aip.de
Private work emails: dsouza.astro ( $ ) gmail.com
Socials
The blog is named after “psi” the greek letter used in Quantum Mechanics to represent the wave function and “nomy” which is the study of something.