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The University of Winnipeg

Dr. Murray Alexander

Murray Alexander Title: Adjunct Professor of Physics
Phone: 204.786.9020
Office: 2L22
Building: Lockhart Hall
Email: mu.alexander@uwinnipeg.ca

Degrees:
Ph.D. (Manchester, 1973)

Courses:

(2024-2025)

  • PHYS-3203: Advanced Mechanics (Winter 2025)

Research Interests:

Astrophysics of Binary Star Systems

There are two projects.

  1. Explore mathematically the dynamical behaviour of an exoplanet orbiting a host star, taking into account observed precessional motion of both the star and the orbit, and resonances between the star’s oscillations and the orbital motion. Transitions into and out of resonance have been investigated to explain the period and primary eclipse anomalies in the observed data of several exoplanet systems in the Kepler and TESS surveys.
  2. Extend these models to examine gravity-mode oscillations in early-type stars in binary systems: angular momentum transport; resonances with orbital motion; and observational consequences (‘tidal oscillators’).

 

Publications:

  • E. Budding, J. Southworth, K. Pavlovski, M.D. Rhodes, W. Zihao, T. Love, M.G. Blackford, T.S. Banks, Murray Alexander. The enigmatic multiple star VV Ori. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 527, 2024, Pages 6389-6405.
  • Murray E. Alexander. Orbital precession in short-period hot Jupiter exoplanet systems. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 522, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 1968–1986.
  • M.E. Alexander, R. Kobes. Effects of vaccination and population structure on influenza epidemic spread in the presence of two circulating strains. BMC Public Health, 11(Suppl 1):S8, 2011.
  • M.E. Alexander, R. Kobes. Generating and solving the mean-field and pair-approximation equations in epidemiological models. arXiv: 1007.2883v1 [physics.soc-ph] (2010).
  • M.E. Alexander, R. Kobes. Expansion of the conditional probability function in a network with nearest-neighbour degree correlations. arXiv: 1007.0717 [phys-soc-ph] (2010).
  • P. Zhilkin, M.E. Alexander, J. Sun. Nonlinear registration using variational principle for mutual information. Pattern Recognition, 2008, 41(8), p. 2493-2502.
  • M.E. Alexander, Moghadas S.M., Röst G., Wu J.-H. A delay differential model for pandemic influenza with antiviral treatment. Bull. Math. Biol., 70:382-397, 2008.
  • Alexander, M.E., A.R. Summers, and S.M. Moghadas. “Neimark–Sacker bifurcations in a non-standard numerical scheme for a class of positivity-preserving ODEs Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 462(2074) pp. 3167 – 3184, 2006.
  • M.E. Alexander, S.M. Moghadas, P. Rohani, and A.R. Summers, “Modelling the effect of a booster vaccination on disease epidemiology”, Journal of Mathematical Biology 52, pp. 290-306, 2006.
  • S.M. Moghadas and M.E. Alexander, “Bifurcation and numerical analysis of a generalized Gause-type predator-prey model”, Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems, Series B, 13(5), pp. 533-554, 2006.
  • Alexander, M.E., "Tidal Resonances in Binary Star Systems", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 227 (1987), pp. 843-861
  • Alexander, M.E., "Tidal Resonances in Binary Star Systems. II. Slowly Rotating Stars", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 235 (1988), 1367-1383