PTYS/LPL Faculty

Kuiper 515
Renu Malhotra
Regents Professor, Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor
Ph.D., 1988, Cornell University
Years with LPL: 2000 to present
Astrobiology, Exoplanets; Planetary Formation and Evolution, Orbital Dynamics, Small Bodies, Theoretical Astrophysics
Professor Malhotra's research spans orbital dynamics in the solar system and in exo-solar planetary systems. Current topics of research are: theory of orbital resonances, long term stability and chaos in the asteroid belt and in the Kuiper belt, the orbital migration history of the giant planets, and the dynamics of exo-solar planetary systems.
Renu Malhotra is Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor and Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences at The University of Arizona in Tucson, where she directed the Theoretical Astrophysics Program during 2011-2016. She was born in New Delhi and grew up in Hyderabad, India. She earned her M.S. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 1983, and her Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 1988. She did post-doctoral research at Cornell and at Caltech, and worked as a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Her work in planetary dynamics has spanned a wide variety of topics, including extra-solar planets and debris disks around nearby stars, the formation and evolution of the Kuiper belt and the asteroid belt, the orbital resonances amongst the moons of the giant planets, and the meteoritic bombardment history of the planets. She has revolutionized our understanding of the history of the solar system by using the orbital resonance between Pluto and Neptune to infer large-scale orbital migration of the giant planets and to predict the existence of the "Plutinos" and other small planets in resonance with Neptune. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been the recipient of honors and awards from the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cornell University, The University of Arizona, and the IIT-Delhi.
Current Grants
- Co-I, Alien Earths: NASA
- PI: Provenance of the Plutinos: JPL-SURP
- Co-I, Dynamics of sticky resonances and detached Kuiper belt objects: NASA
- PI, Kuiper Belt Dynamics with a Distant Unseen Planet: NSF
- PI, Distribution of planet masses, planet-planet separations and dynamical lifetimes of planetary systems: NASA
- Co-I, Earths in Other Solar Systems: Toward forming and discovering planets: NASA
Current Spacecraft Involvement
Former Spacecraft Involvement
- Interstellar Probe Science Definition Team, 1999-2004
- Brenae Bailey (APPMATH)
- Theodore Broeren (APPMATH)
- Saverio Cambioni (PTYS)
- Jose Daniel Castro Cisneros (PHYS)
- Michael Hammer (ASTR)
- Hamish Hay (PTYS)
- Nathan Hendler (PTYS)
- Youngmin JeongAhn (PTYS)
- Lei Lan (Tsinghua University)
- Po-Yen Liu (NCU-Taiwan)
- David Lomeli (PHYS+ASTR)
- Ian Matheson (AME)
- David Minton (PTYS)
- Amaya Moro-Martin (ASTR)
- Sarah Morrison (PTYS)
- Jessica Pillow (APPMATH)
- Nathan Reiland (AME)
- Timothy Rodigas (ASTR)
- Benjamin Sharkey (PTYS)
- Rachel Smullen (ASTR)
- Adam Sutherland (ASTR)
- Matthew Tiscareno (PTYS)
- Kathryn Volk ( PTYS)
- Xianyu Wang (Tsinghua University)
- Nan Zhang (Tsinghua University)
Former Postdocs
- Kathryn Volk
- Joseph Hahn
- Stephen Kortenkamp
Current Staff Scientists
- Kathryn Volk
Based on Google Scholar and NASA ADS: NASA ADS Author search: Renu Malhotra
Recent refereed publications (NASA ADS): Years 2019 through 2020
Malhotra, R. The case for a deep search for Earth’s Trojan asteroids. Nat Astron 3, 193–194 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0697-z
Hendler, Nathanial P. & Malhotra, Renu 2020, The Planetary Science Journal. Observational Completion Limit of Minor Planets from the Asteroid Belt to Jupiter Trojans
Petrovich, Cristobal, Muñoz, Diego J., Kratter, Kaitlin M., & Malhotra, Renu 2020, The Astrophysical Journal. A Disk-driven Resonance as the Origin of High Inclinations of Close-in Planets
Barnouin, O. S., et al. (including Malhotra, R.) 2020, Nature Geoscience. Author Correction: Shape of (101955) Bennu indicative of a rubble pile with internal stiffness
Volk, Kathryn & Malhotra, Renu 2020, The Astronomical Journal. Dynamical Instabilities in Systems of Multiple Short-period Planets Are Likely Driven by Secular Chaos: A Case Study of Kepler-102
Malhotra, Renu & Zhang, Nan 2020, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. On the divergence of first-order resonance widths at low eccentricities
Malhotra, Renu & Ingersoll, Andrew P. 2020, Icarus. Adam P. Showman (1968-2020)
Amato, Davide, Malhotra, Renu, Sidorenko, Vladislav, & Rosengren, Aaron J. 2020, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy. Lunar close encounters compete with the circumterrestrial Lidov-Kozai effect
Hendler, Nathanial, Pascucci, Ilaria, Pinilla, Paola, Tazzari, Marco, Carpenter, John, Malhotra, Renu, & Testi, Leonardo 2020, The Astrophysical Journal. The Evolution of Dust Disk Sizes from a Homogeneous Analysis of 1-10 Myr old Stars
Markwardt, Larissa, Gerdes, D. W., Malhotra, R., Becker, J. C., Hamilton, S. J., & Adams, F. C. 2020, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Search for L5 Earth Trojans with DECam
Malhotra, Renu 2019, Geoscience Letters. Resonant Kuiper belt objects: a review
Lan, Lei & Malhotra, Renu 2019, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy. Neptune's resonances in the scattered disk
Volk, Kathryn & Malhotra, Renu 2019, The Astronomical Journal. Not a Simple Relationship between Neptune’s Migration Speed and Kuiper Belt Inclination Excitation
Su, Kate Y. L., Jackson, Alan P., Gáspár, András, Rieke, George H., Dong, Ruobing, Olofsson, Johan, Kennedy, G. M., Leinhardt, Zoë M., Malhotra, Renu, Hammer, Michael, Meng, Huan Y. A., Rujopakarn, W., Rodriguez, Joseph E., Pepper, Joshua, Reichart, D. E., James, David, & Stassun, Keivan G. 2019, The Astronomical Journal. Extreme Debris Disk Variability: Exploring the Diverse Outcomes of Large Asteroid Impacts During the Era of Terrestrial Planet Formation
Walsh, K. J., Jawin, E. R., Ballouz, R. -L., Barnouin, O. S., Bierhaus, E. B., Connolly, H. C., Molaro, J. L., McCoy, T. J., Delbo', M., Hartzell, C. M., Pajola, M., Schwartz, S. R., Trang, D., Asphaug, E., Becker, K. J., Beddingfield, C. B., Bennett, C. A., Bottke, W. F., Burke, K. N., Clark, B. C., Daly, M. G., Dellagiustina, D. N., Dworkin, J. P., Elder, C. M., Golish, D. R., Hildebrand, A. R., Malhotra, R., Marshall, J., Michel, P., Nolan, M. C., Perry, M. E., Rizk, B., Ryan, A., Sandford, S. A., Scheeres, D. J., Susorney, H. C. M., Thuillet, F., Lauretta, D. S., & Osiris-Rex Team 2019, Nature Geoscience. Publisher Correction: Craters, boulders and regolith of (101955) Bennu indicative of an old and dynamic surface
Barnouin, O. S., et al. (including Malhotra, R.) 2019, Nature Geoscience. Shape of (101955) Bennu indicative of a rubble pile with internal stiffness
Walsh, K. J., Jawin, E. R., Ballouz, R. -L., Barnouin, O. S., Bierhaus, E. B., Connolly, H. C., Molaro, J. L., McCoy, T. J., Delbo', M., Hartzell, C. M., Pajola, M., Schwartz, S. R., Trang, D., Asphaug, E., Becker, K. J., Beddingfield, C. B., Bennett, C. A., Bottke, W. F., Burke, K. N., Clark, B. C., Daly, M. G., Dellagiustina, D. N., Dworkin, J. P., Elder, C. M., Golish, D. R., Hildebrand, A. R., Malhotra, R., Marshall, J., Michel, P., Nolan, M. C., Perry, M. E., Rizk, B., Ryan, A., Sandford, S. A., Scheeres, D. J., Susorney, H. C. M., Thuillet, F., Lauretta, D. S., & Osiris-Rex Team 2019, Nature Geoscience. Craters, boulders and regolith of (101955) Bennu indicative of an old and dynamic surface
Rizk, B., Drouet d'Aubigny, C., Hergenrother, C. W., Bos, B. J., Golish, D. R., Malhotra, R., Lauretta, D. S., Butt, J., Patel, J., Fitzgibbon, M., May, C., Bierhaus, E. B., Freund, S., Fisher, M., Cambioni, S., Bennett, C. A., Balram-Knutson, S. S., Harshman, K., DellaGiustina, D. N., Antreasian, P., Leonard, J., Mink, R., Calloway, A., Bartels, A. E., Enos, H., Boynton, W. V., Nolan, M. C., & Moreau, M. 2019, Advances in Space Research. OSIRIS-REx low-velocity particles during outbound cruise
- USRA Announces 2020 Elections to its Board and Council of Institutions Positions - USRA, May 2020
- How the planets got their spots - The Economist, December 2019
- La mystérieuse «planète X» serait plus proche que prévu du Soleil - Le Figaro, March 2019
- Battle Scars on Pluto and Charon Reveal the Solar System’s Origins - PBS Nova, February 2019
- A Journey Into the Solar System’s Outer Reaches, Seeking New Worlds to Explore - New York Times, December 2018
- Did our ancient sun go on a diet? Bands of martian rock could solve the ‘faint young sun’ paradox - Science Magazine, December 2018
- Earth's New Buddy Is Asteroid, Not Space Junk - UA News, October 17, 2017
- UA Scientists and the Curious Case of the Warped Kuiper Belt - June 2017
- Did This Wrong-way Asteroid Come from Beyond the Solar System? - Sky & Telescope, May 2018
- New Wrinkles in the Search for “Planet X” - Sky & Telescope, June 2017
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Semester | Course | Day/Time | Location | Resources |
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Spring 2021 | PTYS 595B-002 | TTH 9:30-10:45a.m. | Kuiper 301 |
Syllabus D2L |
Spring 2020 | PTYS 553-001 | TTH 9:30-10:45a.m. | Kuiper 312 | Syllabus |
Semester | Course | Day/Time | Location | Resources |
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Spring 2019 | PTYS/ASTR 170B2-001 | TTH 9:30-10:45a.m. | Kuiper 308 |
Syllabus Course Page |
Spring 2018 | PTYS 553-001 | TTH 9:30 - 10:45a.m. | Kuiper 312 |
Syllabus Course Page |
Fall 2018 | PTYS 516-001 | TTH 9:30-10:45a.m. | Kuiper 312 |
Syllabus Course Page |
Fall 2018 | PTYS 416-001 | TTH 9:30-10:45a.m. | Kuiper 312 |
Syllabus Course Page |