Michael Hahn

Michael Hahn is a research scientist at the Columbia Astrophysics  Laboratory. He received his Ph. D. in Applied Physics from Columbia University in 2009. His main research interest is solar physics and especially the coronal heating problem, which is to understand the physical processes that heat the corona of the Sun to over a million degrees. This has been one of the major problems in astrophysics. He is pursuing solutions to this problem through solar observations, laboratory plasma experiments, and atomic physics measurements. His observational studies of solar spectra indicate that plasma waves play an important role in heating the corona. The objective of the plasma experiments is to generate similar waves in the lab, where their properties can be studied in greater detail. Other experiments in atomic physics aim to improve the interpretation of observed spectra, thereby permitting more precise and detailed measurements of the Sun and other astrophysical objects.