Alex Stornelli '25, along with Assistant Professor of Physics Anish Agashe, recently published a research article titled, "Static Charged Polytropic Spheres with a Cosmological Constant: Physical Acceptability and Trapped Orbits," in European Physical Journal Plus.
The article was partially based on the work Stornelli did for his St. Mary's Project (SMP). He continued this research after graduation. He also presented these results in the American Physical Society Mid Atlantic Section Meeting in November 2024 and 2025. In this research, the authors found new numerical solutions to the equations of general relativity corresponding to fluid spheres with a polytropic equation of state. These solutions (at least their neutral counterparts) could be used to model astrophysical objects such as stars and dark matter halos.
Stornelli graduated with a physics major and mathematics minor in 2025. He was awarded the Geneva Boone Award for Outstanding SMP as well as the physics department research award.
