WELCOME! to the web site of Phil Armitage at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and a Fellow at JILA. My research focuses on the formation and early evolution of extrasolar planetary systems, and the astrophysics of black holes. I am on sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year, but my normal teaching includes a range of primarily upper division undergraduate and graduate classes.

PUBLICATIONS RECENT PAPERS
A complete list of my publications via ADS.

My graduate level textbook on planet formation is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in December 2009. The textbook is a greatly expanded version of my Lecture notes on the formation and early evolution of planetary systems, which I plan to maintain and update as a freely available reference.

Black hole mergers: the first light, E.M. Rossi, G. Lodato, P.J.Armitage, J.E. Pringle & A.R. King, MNRAS, in press
Giant planet migration, disk evolution, and the origin of transitional disks, R.D. Alexander & P.J. Armitage, ApJ, 704, 989 (2009)
Planet-planet scattering in planetesimal disks, S.N. Raymond, P.J. Armitage & N. Gorelick, ApJ, 699, L88 (2009)
Time-dependent models of the structure and evolution of self-gravitating protoplanetary discs, W.K.M. Rice & P.J. Armitage, MNRAS, 396, 228 (2009)
Planet-planet scattering leads to tightly packed planetary systems, S.N. Raymond, R. Barnes, D. Veras, P.J. Armitage, N. Gorelick & R. Greenberg, ApJ, 696, L98 (2009)
Massive black hole binary mergers within sub-pc scale gas discs, J. Cuadra, P.J. Armitage, R.D. Alexander & M.C. Begelman, MNRAS, 393, 1423 (2009)
Extrasolar planet eccentricities from scattering in the presence of residual gas disks, N. Moeckel, S.N. Raymond & P.J. Armitage, ApJ, 688, 1361 (2008)
Microphysical dissipation, turbulence and magnetic fields in hyper-accreting discs, E.M. Rossi, P.J. Armitage & K. Menou, MNRAS, 391, 922 (2008)
Mean motion resonances from planet-planet scattering, S.N. Raymond, R. Barnes, P.J. Armitage, & N. Gorelick, ApJ, 687, L107 (2008)
STUDENTS & POSTDOCS RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am currently working with University of Colorado graduate students Jared Workman and Anna Hughes, and with postdoctoral fellows Kris Beckwith and Sean Raymond.

Past members of my group include former student Dimitri Veras (now a postdoc at the University of Florida), and postdoc Ken Rice (now on the faculty at the University of Edinburgh). Other collaborators include former Colorado postdocs Richard Alexander (Leiden), Daniel Proga (UNLV), Jorge Cuadra (MPA) and Elena Rossi (Racah Institute).

My research in theoretical and computational astrophysics focuses on two main areas. I am broadly interested in planet formation and protoplanetary disk evolution, including studies of angular momentum transport in protoplanetary disks, the formation of giant and terrestrial planets, and the early evolution of extrasolar planetary systems. I also work more generally in the field of accretion disk theory, where the goals are to elucidate the basic physics of accretion and to make predictions for observable phenomena around young stars, compact objects, and black holes.
TEACHING EXTRASOLAR PLANETS
ASTR 1120: General Astronomy (Spring 2005)
ASTR 3300: Extraterrestrial Life (Spring 2008)
ASTR 3730: Astrophysics 1 (Fall 2007)
ASTR 3830: Astrophysics 2 (Spring 2007)
ASTR 5110: Internal Processes 1 (Fall 2005)
ASTR 5120: Radiative and Dynamical Processes (Spring 2009)
ASTR 5700: Stellar Structure and Evolution (Fall 2002)
ASTR 5820: Solar System Dynamics and Origins (Fall 2008)
ASTR 6000: Disks around Stars (Fall 2002 graduate seminar)
ASTR 6000: Gamma-ray bursts (Fall 2004 graduate seminar)
ASTR 6000: Black Hole Formation (Spring 2007 graduate seminar)
ASTR 6000: Galactic Center (Spring 2008 graduate seminar)
Plots of the orbital parameters of currently known extrasolar planets.
Planet Formation and Migration - a popular article I curate for Scholarpedia.

NEW! Presentations on "Planet Formation" given as part of the XIII Ciclo de Cursos Especiais (a summer school for South American graduate students) at the Observatório Nacional, Rio de Janeiro in 2008:
Lecture 1: Observations of planetary systems
Lecture 2: Protoplanetary disks
Lecture 3: Planetesimal formation
Lecture 4: Formation of terrestrial and giant planets
Lecture 5: Evolution and stability of planetary systems

MOVIES FUN STUFF
Animations from numerical simulations of black hole accretion, planet migration and electromagnetic counterparts to black hole binary mergers. Apart from the above, my interests include hiking, running, triathlon and photography. I maintain a separate web site of landscape photography, mostly from the National Parks and wilderness areas of North America. Finally, there's the usual list of web links.
Phil Armitage (pja@jilau1.colorado.edu)
JILA, Campus Box 440
University of Colorado
Boulder CO80309-0440
USA

Tel: 303-492-7836 or FAX: 303-492-5235