Israel Carrillo

To understand planet formation, I am looking planets as they are being consumed by their star. This happens with dead stars, white dwarfs, where planets once in stable orbits spiral inwards and collide or simply get torn apart by the stars gravity. Astronomers look at the atmospheres of the white dwarfs and see the guts of these planets as they are being actively pulled into the star by its gravity. This is the only way we can directly observe the composition of the interiors of planets. I am using these polluted white dwarfs to understand what's going on during large impact events as well as what's going on deep in planetary mantles.

I am working on experimental materials science and (exo)planetary science through at-parameter (up to 200 GPa, Temps greater than 4000 K) dynamic compression experiments at Sandia National Labs with silica melts, which is what small rocky planet mantles are primarily composed of. These experiments aim to understand how the presence of volatile impurities in molten silica affects the thermodynamic properties of the melts. 

From these experiments, equations of state can be derived and implemented in planetary structure models and help understand how volatiles retained in planetary mantles throughout their evolution affect the overall structure of the planet. 

I got my B.S. in Physics & a minor in Geophysics and Planetary Physics from the University of California Los Angeles from 2019-2023. I worked on exoplanet formation modeling research in the Planet Formation Group at UCLA with my undergraduate research advisor, Hilke Schlichting, and her collaborator, Edward Young. I applied their Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune thermochemical planetary evolution model to replicate the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system's masses and radii. This helped reinforce their model as a robust explanatory mechanism for the reduced bulk density of many observed planets in comparison to Earth.