Peter M. Garnavich is a faculty member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame. His primary research area is the study of supernovae and their diversity. He has also studied gamma ray bursts and cataclysmic variable stars. Garnavich is a member of a supernova search team that contributed to the discovery of dark energy in 1998. At Notre Dame, Garnavich has developed and participated in collaborations using the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Kepler Space Telescope. He was named a fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 2024.
Early life and education In the 1970s, observing a partial eclipse as a boy led to Garnavich's interest in astronomy and physics. According to Garnavich, "The eclipse is what pushed me over the edge and I decided that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life." Garnavich pursued amateur astronomy while in high school as a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). He independently discovered Nova Cygni 1975 and the night before obtained prediscovery photographs using Kodak Tri-X Pan emulsion film. The early rise of Nova Cygni 1975 was defined by his data combined with observations by Ben Mayer. Garnavich earned a bachelor of science in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1980, a master of science in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1983, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington in 1991.
Career and research Garnavich has been a co-author on over 1000 publications, an author on over 300 refereed papers, and has an h-index of 99 according to Google Scholar. Garnavich served as a research associate at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) from 1983 to 1985. He worked with Barry Lasker on the Guide Star Catalog for the Hubble Space Telescope. Following the completion of his Ph.D., Garnavich was a postdoctoral fellow at Dominion Astrophysical Observatory from 1992 to 1995. He used the 72-inch Plaskett telescope to measure the age and distance of open star cluster NGC 6791. Garnavich also obtained spectra of bright supernova SN 1993J located in nearby galaxy M81. Garnavich was also a fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian from 1995 to 1999. In 1998, Garnavich led a team that used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe three distant high-redshift supernovae, the first published results of the High-Z Supernova Search Team. The supernova observations indicated that the universe was not slowing down in its expansion and would potentially expand forever. These images were also featured on the January 14, 1998 Astronomy Picture of the Day internet site. Garnavich was a key member of the High-Z Supernova Search Team that discovered the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. That discovery was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the prize was given to High-Z team leader Brian Schmidt and team member Adam Reiss. Also receiving the prize was Saul Perlmutter of the Supernova Cosmology Project.
Also while at the Center for Astrophysics, Garnavich began to collaborate with Kris Stanek to study the origin of enigmatic gamma ray bursts (GRB). These distant explosions, among the most powerful in the universe, were thought to be linked to supernovae, but confirmation of this relationship was needed. Garnavich and Stanek detected features attributed to a supernova in the spectrum of "nearby" (6-billion light years) gamma ray burst GRB 011121 which was observed in 2001. Their results linked gamma ray bursts with supernovae. As with this result, observations of GRB 030329 in 2003 led Garnavich to suggest that the progenitor star was likely a hypernova, an exploding star of mass 20-50 times that of the Sun. In 2005, after joining the faculty of the University of Notre Dame, Garnavich used the Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the heat (afterglow) in far-infrared of another gamma ray burst, GRB 050525a. In 2000, Garnavich joined the University of Notre Dame as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2003. In 2008, he earned the rank of full professor. Garnavich was appointed chair of the Department of Physics in 2017. In 2022, the department was officially named the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The current chair of the department is Morten Eskildsen.
In 2003, working with colleagues from Harvard, Garnavich published results of a study of pre-main sequence star KH 15D. As a binary star system, the team concluded that anomalous changes in brightness were likely caused by a disk of opaque matter occulting the star. The paper's main author is Joshua Winn of Princeton University. Also at Notre Dame, Garnavich continued his supernova and cosmology research. As a member of the ESSENCE Supernova Survey collaboration, Garnavich obtained the spectra and distances of 102 Type Ia supernovae. Some of these data were used to estimate the value of the "dark energy equation of state parameter" (w), a measure of the density of dark energy in an expanding universe. Using data from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey, Garnavich was able to link Type Ia supernova rates with galaxy characteristics. This work involved comparing the early behavior of supernova light curves with models of the progenitor stars. The study of supernova rise times led to Brian Hayden's Ph.D. dissertation. Charlotte M. Wood of Iowa State University and Benjamin Rose of Baylor University earned their PhDs working under Garnavich at the University of Notre Dame in the field of supernova cosmology. Wood's dissertation concerned Type Ia supernovae in elliptical galaxies and the use of supernovae in measuring the Hubble constant. Benjamin Rose's dissertation addressed "systematic biases of Type Ia supernova distances used in observational cosmology".
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