Research

My research focus is broadly galaxy evolution and cosmology. I have been a member of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment and the Dragonfly Telephoto Array team, and I am a member of the Time Domain/Multi-Messenger Sub-Group for the High Energy X-ray Probe (HEX-P) proposal team.

I am interested in understanding the processes that impact star formation and the baryon cycle in low mass, low metallicity galaxies. I use both observations (of stellar populations and the gas in and around galaxies) and simulations to more holistically study the conditions under which star formation proceeds (or doesn’t!) in local dwarf galaxies and galaxies at high redshift. An up-to-date list of quenched, isolated dwarf galaxy candidates and their inferred physical properties is available here.

See below for some research highlights (with brief summaries) and a list of publications.

In a past life, my research was focused on time-domain astronomy (it’s where my astrophysics research career started when I was an undergraduate at Northwestern!). It’s a subfield I still love and return to sporadically.


Software

In my spare time, I enjoy working on more computationally oriented projects that will hopefully be useful to (or fun for) the larger community. A few such projects are in the works right now, so do check back for updates.

  • albumpl – Custom matplotlib color palettes based on album covers.
  • angelus – Crossmatch a field with existing galaxy catalogs and check virial coverage. (This idea was spun off of a function in uwstatus, my package for checking the status of Dragonfly UW observations and cross-matching UW fields with existing galaxy catalogs.)

Some software comes out of the course of my usual (published) work, too!

  • delight – Deep Learning Identification of Galaxy Hosts of Transients
  • silkscreen – Infer properties of dwarf galaxies and star clusters from survey imaging using simulation-based inference.
  • xraydlps – Plot and classify X-ray transient light curves.

Publications

Below is a list of submitted, accepted, and published papers. My CV lists some additional in preparation papers, which have not yet been submitted, but for which drafts exist. These drafts may be made available upon reasonable request (as for fellowship or grant evaluation).

2024

  1. SUBMITTED
    On the Universality of Star Formation Efficiency in Galaxies
    Ava Polzin, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Vadim A. Semenov, and Nickolay Y. Gnedin
    OJAp, submitted, Jul 2024
  2. SUBMITTED
    Constraints on Relativistic Jets from the Fast X-ray Transient 210423 using Prompt Radio Follow-Up Observations
    Dina Ibrahimzade, Raffaella Margutti, Joe S. Bright, Peter Blanchard, Kerry Paterson, Dacheng Lin, Huei Sears, Ava Polzin, Igor Andreoni, Genevieve Schroeder, Kate D. Alexander, Edo Berger, Deanne L. Coppejans, Aprajita Hajela, Jimmy Irwin, Tanmoy Laskar, Brian D. Metzger, Jillian C. Rastinejad, and Lauren Rhodes
    ApJ, submitted, Jul 2024
  3. SUBMITTED
    Silkscreen: Direct Measurements of Galaxy Distances from Survey Image Cutouts
    Tim B. Miller, Imad Pasha, Ava Polzin, and Pieter van Dokkum
    ApJ, submitted, Jul 2024
  4. MNRAS
    Forecasting Galaxy Cluster HI Mass Recovery with CHIME at Redshifts z = 1 and 2 via the IllustrisTNG Simulations
    Ava Polzin, Laura Newburgh, Priyamvada Natarajan, and Hsiao-Wen Chen
    MNRAS, Aug 2024
  5. ApJ
    Modeling Molecular Hydrogen in Low-Metallicity Galaxies
    Ava Polzin, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Vadim A. Semenov, and Nickolay Y. Gnedin
    ApJ, May 2024
  6. FSpaS
    The High Energy X-ray Probe (HEX-P): Sensitive Broadband X-ray Observations of Transient Phenomena in the 2030s
    Murray Brightman, Raffaella Margutti, Ava Polzin, Amruta Jaodand, Kenta Hotokezaka, Jason A. J. Alford, Gregg Hallinan, Elias Kammoun, Kunal Mooley, Megan Masterson, Lea Marcotulli, Arne Rau, Thomas Wevers, George A. Younes, Daniel Stern, Javier A. García, and Kristin Madsen
    Front. Astron. Space Sci., Jan 2024

2023

  1. BOOK
    Astronomy as a Field: A Guide for Aspiring Astrophysicists
    Ava Polzin, Yasmeen Asali, Sanah Bhimani, Madison Brady, Mandy C. Chen, Lindsay DeMarchi, Michelle Gurevich, Emily Lichko, Emma Louden, Julie Malewicz, Samantha Pagan, Malena Rice, Zili Shen, Emily Simon, Candice Stauffer, J. Luna Zagorac, Katie Auchettl, Katelyn Breivik, Hsiao-Wen Chen, Deanne Coppejans, Sthabile Kolwa, Raffaella Margutti, Priyamvada Natarajan, Erica Nelson, Kim L. Page, Silvia Toonen, Katherine E. Whitaker, and Irina Zhuravleva
    Book, Dec 2023
  2. ApJ
    The Luminosity Phase Space of Galactic and Extragalactic X-ray Transients Out to Intermediate Redshifts
    Ava Polzin, Raffaella Margutti, Deanne Coppejans, Katie Auchettl, Kim L. Page, Georgios Vasilopoulos, Joe S. Bright, Paolo Esposito, Peter K. G. Williams, Koji Mukai, and Edo Berger
    ApJ, Dec 2023
  3. ApJ
    Detection of Cosmological 21 cm Emission with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
    Mandana Amiri, Kevin Bandura, Tianyue Chen, Meiling Deng, Matt Dobbs, Mateus Fandino, Simon Foreman, Mark Halpern, Alex S. Hill, Gary Hinshaw, Carolin Höfer, Joseph Kania, T. L. Landecker, Joshua MacEachern, Kiyoshi Masui, Juan Mena-Parra, Nikola Milutinovic, Arash Mirhosseini, Laura Newburgh, Anna Ordog, Ue-Li Pen, Tristan Pinsonneault-Marotte, Ava Polzin, Alex Reda, Andre Renard, J. Richard Shaw, Seth R. Siegel, Saurabh Singh, Keith Vanderlinde, Haochen Wang, Donald V. Wiebe, Dallas Wulf, and  CHIME Collaboration
    ApJ, Apr 2023

2022

  1. AJ
    DELIGHT: Deep Learning Identification of Galaxy Hosts of Transients using Multiresolution Images
    Francisco Förster, Alejandra M. Muñoz Arancibia, Ignacio Reyes-Jainaga, Alexander Gagliano, Dylan Britt, Sara Cuellar-Carrillo, Felipe Figueroa-Tapia, Ava Polzin, Yara Yousef, Javier Arredondo, Diego Rodrı́guez-Mancini, Javier Correa-Orellana, Amelia Bayo, Franz E. Bauer, Márcio Catelan, Guillermo Cabrera-Vives, Raya Dastidar, Pablo A. Estévez, Giuliano Pignata, Lorena Hernández-Garcı́a, Pablo Huijse, Esteban Reyes, Paula Sánchez-Sáez, Mauricio Ramı́rez, Daniela Grandón, Jonathan Pineda-Garcı́a, Francisca Chabour-Barra, and Javier Silva-Farfán
    AJ, Nov 2022
  2. ApJ
    Tidal Distortions in NGC1052-DF2 and NGC1052-DF4: Independent Evidence for a Lack of Dark Matter
    Michael A. Keim, Pieter van Dokkum, Shany Danieli, Deborah Lokhorst, Jiaxuan Li, Zili Shen, Roberto Abraham, Seery Chen, Colleen Gilhuly, Qing Liu, Allison Merritt, Tim B. Miller, Imad Pasha, and Ava Polzin
    ApJ, Aug 2022
  3. ApJS
    An Overview of CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
    CHIME Collaboration, Mandana Amiri, Kevin Bandura, Anja Boskovic, Tianyue Chen, Jean-François Cliche, Meiling Deng, Nolan Denman, Matt Dobbs, Mateus Fandino, Simon Foreman, Mark Halpern, David Hanna, Alex S. Hill, Gary Hinshaw, Carolin Höfer, Joseph Kania, Peter Klages, T. L. Landecker, Joshua MacEachern, Kiyoshi Masui, Juan Mena-Parra, Nikola Milutinovic, Arash Mirhosseini, Laura Newburgh, Rick Nitsche, Anna Ordog, Ue-Li Pen, Tristan Pinsonneault-Marotte, Ava Polzin, Alex Reda, Andre Renard, J. Richard Shaw, Seth R. Siegel, Saurabh Singh, Rick Smegal, Ian Tretyakov, Kwinten van Gassen, Keith Vanderlinde, Haochen Wang, Donald V. Wiebe, James S. Willis, and Dallas Wulf
    ApJS, Aug 2022
  4. ApJ
    Using the Sun to Measure the Primary Beam Response of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
    Mandana Amiri, Kevin Bandura, Anja Boskovic, Jean-François Cliche, Meiling Deng, Matt Dobbs, Mateus Fandino, Simon Foreman, Mark Halpern, Alex S. Hill, Gary Hinshaw, Carolin Höfer, Joseph Kania, T. L. Landecker, Joshua MacEachern, Kiyoshi Masui, Juan Mena-Parra, Laura Newburgh, Anna Ordog, Tristan Pinsonneault-Marotte, Ava Polzin, Alex Reda, J. Richard Shaw, Seth R. Siegel, Saurabh Singh, Keith Vanderlinde, Haochen Wang, James S. Willis, Dallas Wulf, and  CHIME Collaboration
    ApJ, Jun 2022
  5. ApJ
    A Method to Characterize the Wide-angle Point-Spread Function of Astronomical Images
    Qing Liu, Roberto Abraham, Colleen Gilhuly, Pieter van Dokkum, Peter G. Martin, Jiaxuan Li, Johnny P. Greco, Deborah Lokhorst, Seery Chen, Shany Danieli, Michael A. Keim, Allison Merritt, Tim B. Miller, Imad Pasha, Ava Polzin, Zili Shen, and Jielai Zhang
    ApJ, Feb 2022

2021

  1. ApJL
    A Nascent Tidal Dwarf Galaxy Forming within the Northern H I Streamer of M82
    Imad Pasha, Deborah Lokhorst, Pieter G. van Dokkum, Seery Chen, Roberto Abraham, Johnny Greco, Shany Danieli, Tim Miller, Erin Lippitt, Ava Polzin, Zili Shen, Michael A. Keim, Qing Liu, Allison Merritt, and Jielai Zhang
    ApJL, Dec 2021
  2. ApJ
    Simulating the Eclipsing Binary Yields of the Rubin Observatory in the Galactic Field and Star Clusters
    Aaron M. Geller, Ava Polzin, Andrew Bowen, and Adam A. Miller
    ApJ, Oct 2021
  3. ApJL
    A Recently Quenched Isolated Dwarf Galaxy Outside of the Local Group Environment
    Ava Polzin, Pieter van Dokkum, Shany Danieli, Johnny P. Greco, and Aaron J. Romanowsky
    ApJL, Jun 2021