Prof. Amir Levinson

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.

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

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

• PhD  in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1992

• 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

• Wolf Prize for Graduate Students, 1989

• Israel Physical Society Prize, 1991

• NASA ATP Grant, 1995

• Alon Fellowship, 1997