Shami Chatterjee

About

Shami Chatterjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University, affiliated with the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and the Carl Sagan Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Cornell University in 2003, working with Jim Cordes. Prior to his current position, he held roles including Principal Research Scientist and Research Professor at Cornell, a Research Scientist and Queen Elizabeth II Fellow at the Australia Telescope National Facility, a University Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney, and a Jansky Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. His research focuses on pulsars, fast radio bursts (FRBs), and gravitational waves, with significant contributions to the detection of a stochastic background of gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies through the NANOGrav collaboration, using pulsars as precise astrophysical clocks. He was part of the team that discovered the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 at Arecibo and localized it to a distant dwarf galaxy, revealing its unique properties including extreme Faraday rotation indicative of an intensely magnetized environment possibly near a massive black hole or a pulsar wind nebula. Chatterjee's work also includes testing the Principle of Equivalence using a pulsar in a triple system with two white dwarfs, and discovering extraordinary pulsar systems with the Arecibo radio telescope,…

Research topics

• Physics
• Astrophysics
• Astronomy
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Optics
• Quantum mechanics
• Condensed matter physics
• Computational physics
• Data science

Selected publications

• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2022 · 1712 citations

  Abstract We present the first Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the Galactic center source associated with a supermassive black hole. These observations were conducted in 2017 using a global interferometric array of eight telescopes operating at a wavelength of λ = 1.3 mm. The EHT data resolve a compact emission region with intrahour variability. A variety of imaging and modeling analyses all support an image that is dominated by a bright, thick ring with a d…

  DOI

• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2023 · 1414 citations

  Abstract We report multiple lines of evidence for a stochastic signal that is correlated among 67 pulsars from the 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. The correlations follow the Hellings–Downs pattern expected for a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The presence of such a gravitational-wave background with a power-law spectrum is favored over a model with only independent pulsar noises with a Bayes factor in excess…

  DOI

• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2023 · 742 citations

  Abstract The 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) shows positive evidence for the presence of a low-frequency gravitational-wave (GW) background. In this paper, we investigate potential cosmological interpretations of this signal, specifically cosmic inflation, scalar-induced GWs, first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, and domain walls. We find that, with the exception of stable cosmic strings of field theor…

  DOI

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VIII. Magnetic Field Structure near The Event Horizon

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2021 · 640 citations

  Abstract Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations at 230 GHz have now imaged polarized emission around the supermassive black hole in M87 on event-horizon scales. This polarized synchrotron radiation probes the structure of magnetic fields and the plasma properties near the black hole. Here we compare the resolved polarization structure observed by the EHT, along with simultaneous unresolved observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, to expectations from theoretical mo…

  DOI

• Broadband Multi-wavelength Properties of M87 during the 2017 Event Horizon Telescope Campaign

  The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2021 · 98 citations

  In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration succeeded in capturing the first direct image of the center of the M87 galaxy. The asymmetric ring morphology and size are consistent with theoretical expectations for a weakly accreting supermassive black hole of mass ~6.5 × 109M⊙. The EHTC also partnered with several international facilities in space and on the ground, to arrange an extensive, quasi-simultaneous multi-wavelength campaign. This Letter presents the results and analysis of…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Radio Bursts and Gravity from Parsecs to Gigaparsecs

  NSF · $586k · 2018–2021

• Collaborative Research: Booming or Beaming? Sorting out the Dynamic Radio Universe

  NSF · $269k · 2010–2015

Frequent coauthors

• J. M. Cordes

  426 shared

• G. Desvignes

  302 shared

• S. M. Ransom

  240 shared

• M. A. McLaughlin

  234 shared

• Ue‐Li Pen

  227 shared

• I. H. Stairs

  University of British Columbia

  218 shared

• J. W. T. Hessels

  218 shared

• M. Krämer

  212 shared

Labs

• Shami Chatterjee's LabPI

Education

• Ph.D.

  Cornell University

  2003

• B.Tech., Electronics and Communications

  Indian Institute of Technology Madras

  1996

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Nikole Lewish-65
• Anna Y.Q. Hoh-64
• Nicholas Battagliah-63