In this feed, you can find a summary post for each paper I’ve written. See the posts themselves for more details, or view my full publication record on the following databases:

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Dark Matter Velocity Distributions for Direct Detection: Astrophysical Uncertainties are Smaller Than They Appear

May 2025 • Papers

In this paper, I produce phase-space distribution functions for dark matter around the Solar position in 98 simulated Milky Way–like galaxies. This large sample size provides a theoretical uncertainty band on the sensitivity of direct detection experiments. We find the predictions from the simulation to be very consistent with each other and with the Standard Halo Model.

Cosmological Simulations of Stellar Halos with Gaia Sausage–Enceladus Analogues: Two Sausages, One Bun?

August 2024 • Papers

In this paper, I search Milky Way–like galaxies in IllustrisTNG50 for mergers that resemble the GSE, our most recent major merger, and find them a third of the time. I allow for the GSE to be comprised of two mergers, rather than necessarily being a single merger; these pairs account for approimately a third of the GSEs. It's hard to tell single- from two-merger GSEs apart, except that the single mergers are typically accreted more recently.

Probabilistic Inference of the Structure and Orbit of Milky Way Satellites with Semi-Analytic Modeling

November 2023 • Papers

In this paper, I establish a procedure to infer internal and orbital properties of Milky Way satellites using the SatGen semi-analytic model. In particular, I provide values for $v_\mathrm{max}$ and $r_\mathrm{max}$ for the classical satellites, varying over astrophysical uncertainties such as the stellar mass–halo mass relation and baryonic feedback perscriptions. I also show inferred values for the central densities, pericenters, probability of group accretion, and more. The method is easily extensible to other properties, and my code is publicly available.