Prof. Amir Levinson

School of Physics and Astronomy
ביה"ס לפיזיקה ואסטרונומיה סגל אקדמי בכיר
Prof. Amir Levinson
Phone: 03-6408553
Fax: 03-6408179
Office: Kaplun, 113

Research

Prof. Amir Levinson works on problems at the forefront of high-energy astrophysics, including: modeling of black hole activation; formation, dynamics and emission of relativistic jets, and applications to AGNs, microquasars and gamma-ray bursts; theory of radiation-mediated shocks and its application to shock breakout in various stellar explosions and to photospheric emission in GRBs; numerical simulations of AGN wind feedback in young galaxies; magnetar models of fast radio bursts. 

 

Research achievements include: development of analytic and numerical methods that enable detailed calculations of the structure and emission of radiation-mediated shocks during breakout from exploding stars, in an attempt to predict the breakout signal in SNe and GRBs; studies of photospheric emission in GRBs from first principles; first-ever general relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of plasma production and consequent gamma-ray emission in a starved black hole magnetosphere, and its implications for gamma-ray emission from radio galaxies and RIAF sources, as well as for the physics involved in the production of Blandford-Znajek jets. Much of this work is in progress and its development continues.

Education

  • B.SC. in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1985

  • M.SC. in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1988

  • PhD  in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1992

Academic Appointments

  • Research Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, 1992-1995

  • Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics, Cornell university, 1995-1997

  • Senior Lecturer in Physics, Tel Aviv University, 1997-2002

  • Associate Professor in Physics, Tel Aviv University, 2002-2009

  • Visiting Associate Professor, University of Sydney, 2003

  • Visiting Academic, KITP, UC Santa Barbara, Spring 2005

  • Professor in Physics, Tel Aviv University, 2009 - Present

  • JILA distinguish visitor, JILA, Colorado University, spring 2012

  • Head, Astronomy & Astrophysics Department, Tel Aviv University, 2012-2016

Awards and Prizes

  • Wolf Prize for Graduate Students, 1989

  • Israel Physical Society Prize, 1991

  • NASA ATP Grant, 1995

  • Alon Fellowship, 1997 

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