Anaëlle Maury is an astrophysicist (PhD Université Paris VII, 2009) who investigates the birth of stars like our Sun, and the physics to build the first seeds for planets around them. She is now an ICREA research professor with the Institute for Space Sciences, where she will develop her group with the ERC Advanced Grant PEBBLES. Her research has been focusing on understanding processes responsible for the properties of stars when they form in our Galaxy, and on the role of magnetic fields in the construction of protoplanetary disks. At ICE, her team will focus on studying the physics at work for evolution of astrophysical dust into small solid particles which will become planetary systems, using state-of-the-art astronomical data from the most advanced observatories as well as models of star formation including all the relevant physical processes.
Research interests
I study the physics at work in our Galaxy to transform gas into stars and planets. To do so, I use cutting-edge observations with large radio observatories, which I interpret to describe the physics at work by collaborating closely with modelers. My main decisive contributions have been diverse as I evolved as a researcher and stumbled upon new exciting problems, but they all revolve around characterizing the physical processes at work to build stars like our Sun, their circumstellar disks and the first seeds of planetary systems.
Selected publications
– Morbidelli A, Marrocchi Y, Ahmad AA, Bhandare A, Charnoz S, Commercon B, Dullemond CP, Guillot T, Hennebelle P, Lee YN, Lovascio F, Marschall R, Marty B, Maury A & Tamami O 2024, ‘Formation and evolution of a protoplanetary disk: Combining observations, simulations, and cosmochemical constraints‘, Astronomy & astrophysics, 691 – A147.
Selected research activities
2024 witnessed the succesful completion of our work building up new polarization capabilities on the IRAM interferometer NOEMA. With my team, we have designed a system for the NOEMA interferometer to capture the polarized light from astrophysical objects emitting at radio wavelengths, from quasars to young stellar embryos. Our work allowed to provide IRAM a full offline system to calibrate and analyze these very weak signals. As a result, our large program ENYGMA has kicked of, and we have obtained in 2024 the first scientific data from NOEMA, tracing the magnetic field topology in a dozen of embedded protostars in our Galaxy aged less than 0.1Myrs old. These data will be used to study the role of the magnetic fields at the onset of star and planet formation, as well as studying in unprecedented details the properties of astrophysical dust grains when they are incorporated in planet-forming disks.