Wenbin Lu

Assistant Professor
Department of Astronomy, Theoretical Astrophysics Center
University of California Berkeley
Email: wenbinlu.at.berkeley.edu

I am a theoretical astrophysicist. My research has been focused on understanding various energetic transient phenomena. Observationally, these events produce the brightest sources which suddenly appear on the sky and quickly disappear afterwards --- leaving us wondering what happened in nature. The overarching goal is to use them to probe stellar physics, radiative processes, and compact objects. With my collaborators, I have worked on fast radio bursts, tidal disruption events, quasi-periodic eruptions, compact object mergers, little red dots , gamma-ray bursts , relativistic jets, accretion disks, supernovae in binaries, and hyper-velocity stars. These projects involve hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, stellar physics, special/general relativity, and plasma physics.

My past worldline:

• 22-now, Assistant Professor (UC Berkeley)
• 21-22, Lyman Spitzer Fellow (Princeton University)
• 18-21, Burke Fellow (Caltech)
• 2018, PhD in Astronomy (University of Texas Austin)
• 2013, Bachelor in Physics (Peking University)

I enjoy interactions with other researchers on various topics in astrophysics. Many of my projects were initiated during the discussions with postdocs and students. Feel free to contact me if interested.

Research

Recent highlights can be found here. Earlier research can be found here. A full list of my publications is here.

Questions I am currently thinking about:

• What (radiation-hydrodynamic) processes shape the optical/X-ray lightcurves of tidal disruption events?
• What are little red dots, and what can they tell us about the origins of supermassive black holes?
• How does accretion onto black holes launch relativistic jets
• How can we use general relativistic effects to measure black hole spin?
• Formation history of merging black hole and neutron star binaries
• What plasma processes generate fast radio bursts?

Predictions

This table shows a list of testable predictions from my research (updated occassionally).

Teaching:

Radiation (2022 Fall, 2023 Fall, 2025 Spring, 2026 Spring)

Stars (2024 Fall, 2025 Fall, 2026 Fall)

Open-Access Book (maintained on Zenodo):

Astrophysical Radiation (comments welcome!)

CV: here

Publication Lists: ADS   Google Scholar

Useful Notes: GWinspiral   Polytrope   Reduced2body   RandomWalk   ShockJumpCond   MakePubList  

Extra: more about me