I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Relativistic Astrophysics group led by Masaru Shibata at the Albert Einstein Institute, Potsdam, working on neutron-star physics and strong-field tests of gravity. See the research, publications, and links pages for more.
Recent work
Convective stability of massive neutron stars formed in binary mergers
Y. Gao, K. Hayashi, K. Kiuchi, A. T.-L. Lam, H.-J. Kuan, M. Shibata — Phys. Rev. D 113, 023011 (2026)
We run fully general-relativistic hydrodynamics simulations of binary neutron-star mergers out to 100 ms post-merger and derive — then apply for the first time — convective-stability criteria for hot, differentially rotating relativistic stars that include both buoyancy and rotation. The remnant massive neutron stars show no large-scale convective instability: entropy and angular momentum both increase outward, and rotation stabilizes regions that the Schwarzschild criterion would call unstable. Mode analysis reveals no observable inertial modes after the quadrupolar f-modes damp, while the persistent m=1 one-armed mode correlates strongly with violations of linear-momentum conservation — suggesting it may be numerical rather than physical.
Nonradial oscillations of stratified neutron stars with solid crusts
Y. Gao, H.-J. Kuan, C.-J. Xia, H. O. Silva, M. Shibata — Phys. Rev. D 112, 123006 (2025)
We model the dynamical tide of an inspiraling neutron star as a set of driven harmonic oscillators whose natural frequencies are the quasinormal modes of a fully relativistic stellar model with a solid crust and compositional stratification. Stratification erases the canonical crust–core interface mode and replaces it with compositional gravity modes anchored in outer-core buoyancy; meanwhile, the f-mode and core g-mode can leak into the crust under a penetration criterion we derive. The headline result for multimessenger observations: both resonant g-mode forcing and nonresonant f- and crustal-shear-mode driving can overstress the crust before merger, potentially channeling energy into the magnetosphere and powering electromagnetic precursors.
From the blog
Welcome
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