Professor Christoph Federrath

Welcome. Christoph Federrath is a professor, faculty member, and associate director at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Australian National University. He previously was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Stromlo Fellow, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Monash Centre for Astrophysics in Melbourne, the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, and the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Heidelberg. He studied physics at the University of Wuerzburg from 2001 to 2007 and received a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Heidelberg in 2010.

Contact

Prof. Christoph Federrath
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Australian National University
Cotter Road, Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia
Email: christoph.federrath@anu.edu.au
Phone: +61 (0)2 6125 0217
Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 0233
Office: Woolley building (W32)
  

Click image to see a compressively-driven turbulent Federrath...

Research

Federrath's research focuses on understanding the formation of stars in the Universe. Almost everything we know about the Universe comes from looking at the stars. The formation of stars controls galaxy evolution and sets the initial conditions for planet formation. To advance our understanding of star formation, Federrath develops theoretical models and supercomputer simulations of molecular clouds, the birthplaces of stars. This involves the physics of turbulence, gravity, magnetic fields, radiation, stellar feedback and chemical evolution. An essential part of this work is to compare supercomputer simulations performed on thousands of computer cores to real observations in galactic clouds. The ultimate goal of Federrath's research is to establish a model that combines all the relevant physics and chemistry to enable self-consistent comparisons with observations and to provide powerful predictions for how galaxies, stars and planets form in the Universe.

Group

Current and former group members.

Projects

Research project ideas are listed here.

Teaching

Please refer to this page for current and previous courses.

Featured publications


© C. Federrath 2024