People

Dr. Yihan Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Dr. Wang received a BS in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (2015) and a PhD in Physics from Stony Brook University (2022), and was a Fellow at the Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining HKU in 2026. Dr. Wang develops the open-source astrophysics codes SpaceHub and VegasAfterglow.

Dr. Wang's research centers on transient phenomena in time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics, unified by a framework for the coupled evolution of accretion disks and stellar populations in galactic nuclei. Current interests include relativistic transients — gamma-ray burst afterglows, dirty fireballs, fast X-ray transients, and magnetar-powered emission from compact-object mergers; nuclear transients — disk-assisted tidal disruption events, changing-look AGN, and quasi-periodic eruptions; and gravitational-wave sources such as extreme mass-ratio inspirals and binary black holes formed in dense nuclear environments. As a member of the Einstein Probe (EP), SVOM, and LHAASO collaborations, Dr. Wang connects this theory to new high-energy observations, supported by the open-source codes SpaceHub and VegasAfterglow.

1. Wang, Y., Zhang, B., "Evidence of a Past Merger of the Galactic Center Black Hole", 2024, Nature Astronomy, 8, 1592
2. Wang, Y., Perna, R., Zhu, Z., "Floating Binary Planets from Ejections during Close Stellar Encounters", 2024, Nature Astronomy, 8, 756
3. Dai, C.-Y., Quirola-Vásquez, J., Wang, Y.-H., et al., "An Energetic Dirty Fireball Detected in Soft X-rays", 2026, Science, accepted (arXiv:2603.26213)
4. Wang, Y., Zhu, Z., Lin, D. N. C., "Stellar/BH Populations in AGN Disks: Direct Binary Formation from Captured Objects in Nuclear Clusters", 2024, MNRAS, 528, 4958
5. Wang, Y., Chen, C., Zhang, B., "VegasAfterglow: A High-Performance Framework for Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows", 2025, JHEAp
6. Wang, Y.-H., Leigh, N. W. C., Liu, B., Perna, R., "SpaceHub: A High-Performance Gravity Integration Toolkit for Few-Body Problems in Astrophysics", 2021, MNRAS, 505, 1053
7. Wang, Y., Lin, D. N. C., Zhang, B., Zhu, Z., "Changing-Look AGN Behaviour Induced by Disk-Captured Tidal Disruption Events", 2024, ApJL, 962, L7
8. Wang, Y., Zhang, B., Zhu, Z., "Anisotropic Energy Injection from Magnetar Central Engines in Short GRBs", 2024, MNRAS, 528, 3705
9. Wang, Y.-H., Lazzati, D., Perna, R., "The Emergence of Diffused Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows from the Disks of Active Galactic Nuclei", 2022, MNRAS, 516, 5935

1. Gerald Brown Prize, Stony Brook University (2022)
2. Di Tian Prize for Excellent Research (2020)
3. National Endeavor Scholarship (2014)