Professor of Astrophysical, Planetary, and Space Sciences
School of Computational Sciences, and Department
of Physics & Astronomy
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, School of Computational Sciences
Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, College of Science
pbecker@gmu.edu
In 1987 I received my doctorate in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. During 1987-1989, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia, and during 1989-1992, I was an NRC/NAS Cooperative Research Associate at the Space Science Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Since September 1992, I have held a joint appointment with the School of Computational Sciences (formerly the Institute for Computational Sciences and Informatics) and the Department of Physics & Astronomy at George Mason University .
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Click here to see my Complete Vita.
Click here to see a list of my Publications and Talks.
My research interests include a variety of topics in theoretical astrophysics, mathematical physics, and numerical analysis:
Structure and observable properties of accretion columns in
X-ray pulsars.
Production of radio emission in solar noise storms.
Time-dependent models for particle acceleration in astrophysical
plasmas.
Thermal and bulk Comptonization in accretion flows onto compact objects.
Radiation-dominated shock waves in astrophysical sources.
Particle acceleration and the production of outflows from accretion
disks around black holes.
Stability and structure of cosmic-ray modified shock waves
produced by supernova explosions.
Production of radio emission in cooling-flow clusters
of galaxies.
Attenuation of gamma-rays via photon-photon collisions
in compact sources.
Effects of general relativity on the propagation of
particles near rotating black holes.
Properties of solutions to Heun's and Whittaker's differential
equations, including normalization integrals.
Large-scale automated symbolic computational methods
for solving integro-partial differential equations.
I am currently working with CSI doctoral students
Juan Luna
and Ken Wolfram.
I also continue to collaborate with my former students,
Dr. Truong Le,
who holds an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory
in Washington, DC, and Dr. Prasad Subramanian, who is now an Assistant Professor at the
Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, India.
Click here to see the syllabus for ASTR 111: Introduction to Modern Astronomy I
Click here to see the syllabus for CSI 764/ASTR 764: Computational Astrophysics
Click here to see the syllabus for CSI 765/ASTR 765: High-Energy Astrophysics
Click here to see the syllabus for CSI 766/ASTR 766: Relativity and Cosmology
Click here to see the syllabus for PHYS 307: Thermal Physics
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