Research

Current Research

Magnetohydrodynamics of Core-Collapse Supernovae

My doctoral research investigates the magnetohydrodynamics of 3D core-collapse supernovae. Using high-fidelity simulations on distributed HPC systems, I explore how turbulent plasma flow and magnetic fields influence the explosion mechanism of massive stars.

Key Research Areas

Turbulence in Supernovae: Understanding the role of turbulent convection and instabilities in driving supernova explosions. My simulations reveal how turbulent energy cascades affect the shock dynamics and explosion energetics.

Magnetic Field Evolution: Investigating how magnetic fields are amplified and evolve during core collapse. This includes studying the interplay between magnetic fields and vorticity, and how these dynamics affect the explosion mechanism.

Numerical Methods: Developing and adapting numerical solvers for nonlinear PDEs with constraint-preserving methods. This includes enforcing magnetic field divergence-free boundary conditions (∇·B = 0) on 3D Cartesian grids.

Technical Approach

Simulation Code:

• High-fidelity MHD FORTRAN 3D supernova code
• Distributed computing on HPC clusters using MPI
• Optimized for scalability on thousands of cores

Data Analysis:

• Python-based analysis pipelines (NumPy, SciPy, mpi4py)
• Large-scale data visualization
• Statistical analysis of turbulent flows

Numerical Techniques:

• Constraint-preserving methods for MHD
• High-order finite volume schemes
• Adaptive mesh refinement

Technical Skills

Programming Languages:

• Python (NumPy, SciPy, mpi4py)
• FORTRAN
• C++
• MATLAB
• CUDA
• Bash

HPC & Parallel Computing:

• MPI (Message Passing Interface)
• OpenMP
• OpenACC
• Distributed computing optimization

Scientific Computing:

• Numerical methods for PDEs/ODEs
• Vector calculus and tensor analysis
• Statistical analysis
• Data visualization

Tools:

• Docker
• Git version control
• VS Code
• Linux systems

Publications

• Calvert, D., et al. (2025). “Turbulence in Core-Collapse Supernovae”, Astrophysical Journal
• Calvert, D., et al. (2025). “The Interplay of Magnetic Fields and Vorticity in Core-Collapse Supernovae”, Astrophysical Journal (In prep)

Education

Ph.D. in Astrophysics (December 2025)
UC Berkeley & North Carolina State University
Dissertation: Magnetohydrodynamics of 3D Core-Collapse Supernovae

B.S. in Physics with Honors & Applied Mathematics (May 2018)
North Carolina State University