I am a Junior Specialist and the director of SLUG. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Physics (Astrophysics) with Highest Honors in the Major in 2018, thank God. I transferred from Mission College in Santa Clara, CA to UCSC in 2015.

I am generally interested in theoretical and computational astrophysics, transients, high energy astrophysics, compact objects, formation channels of LIGO sources. My projects include studying collisions of compact objects with red giants in galactic nuclei along with tidal disruption events of main sequence stars by stellar mass binary black holes. My advisors are Professor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz (UCSC) and Associate Professor Aldo Batta (INAOE). 

Publications:

“Probing the Black Hole Merger History in Clusters using Stellar Tidal Disruptions”, Johan Samsing, Tejaswi Venumadhav, Liang Dai, Irvin Martinez, Aldo Batta, Martin Lopez Jr., Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Kyle Kremer. 2019, Submitted.

“Tidal Disruptions Of Stars By Binary Black Holes: Modifying The Spin Magnitudes And Directions Of Ligo Sources In Dense Stellar Environments”, Martin Lopez Jr., Aldo Batta, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Irvin Martinez, Johan Samsing. 2018, The Astrophysical Journal, Submitted.

My CV is attached below and movies of my simluations are on my personal website.

CV: PDF

mail: majlopez [at] ucsc.edu
url: www.mjlopezjr.com