Name: Xiaoshu Wu

Position: Associate professor

Office: Hanqin No.2 A220

Email: wuxsh23 at mail.sysu.edu.cn

Areas of Interest:

1. Photochemistry in the upper atmospheres and ionospheres of terrestrial planets

2. Energy distribution of photoelectrons in the ionospheres of terrestrial planets

3. Stellar atmospheres, abundance of r-process elements

Research Overview:

Dr. Wu is a planetary scientist and an astronomer who have broad interests in stellar and planetary physics. Her main research focuse was on the spectral analysis and modeling of stellar atmospheres when she was pursuing the PhD degree and in 2018, her research interests switched to planetary atmospheres within the solar system. Over the past few years, she has made subsantial progresses in the in-situ data analysis and photochemical modelings of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars. In particular, she designed a novel index for the photoelectron energy distribution, notified as the spectral hardness, to characterize the interactions of photoelectrons with  atmospheric neutrals. She then proposed creatively that the altitude variation of photoelectron intensity, a feature seldom notified by previous researchers, was a useful diagnostic of planetary atmospheric composition. Collaborating with other group members, her recent research efforts are devoted to the coupled simulation of the multi-faceted physical and chemical processes occuring in the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets, including photochemistry, radiative transfer, photoelectron production and transport, as well as atmospheric escape. Dr. Wu is also interested in analyzing the spectral data for exoplanets and astriobology in general.