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Dr Deepak Chahal

Deepak

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Stars and Planets

Email: d.chahal@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: G.O. Jones Building, Room 504
Website: https://dchahal-stardust.lovable.app/

Profile

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Stars and Planets group led by Dr Ed Gillen. My work focuses on constraining the stellar evolution in low-mass star regime, from working on characterising their magnetic fields – stellar activity & activity cycles, Lithium depletion, stellar rotation etc., to building a precise data-driven stellar age dating model for the main-sequence stars.

I completed my PhD, “Investigating Magnetic Activity and Activity Cycles in Cool, young main-sequence stars”, at Macquarie University, Australia, under the supervision of Prof. Richard de Grijs and Dr. Devika Kamath.  Originally from India, I transitioned from a background of Mechanical Engineering to Astrophysics, obtaining my master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Space Science & Technology. 

Research

Research Interests:

I am currently developing a comprehensive, data-driven stellar age-determination model for low-mass stars, capable of characterising ages from ~1 Myr to 10 Gyr. I have also developed a methodology to combine multi-survey time-series photometry to detect magnetic activity cycles in low-mass stars, which I am now applying to identify cycles in Sun-like stars.

I have extensive experience working with both space- and ground-based photometric and spectroscopic facilities, including Kepler/K2, ZTF, LAMOST, GALAH, ASAS-SN, Gaia, and TESS.

My wider research interests include:

  • Stellar and exoplanet Evolution
  • Stellar activity and magnetic activity cycles
  • Stellar Rotation and Gyrochronology
  • Impact of host-star’s activity on exoplanetary atmosphere

Publications

Chahal, D., Kamath, D., de Grijs, R., T. Montet, B. & Chen, X. (2025): Photometric Activity Cycles in fast-rotating Stars: Revisiting the Stellar Activity Cycle branches, MNRAS, 540, 1, 668-687.

Chahal, D., Kamath, D., de Grijs, R., Ventura, P. & Chen, X. (2023): Unravelling the period gap using LAMOST chromospheric activity indices, MNRAS, 525, 3, 4026-4041.

Chahal, D., de Grijs, R., Kamath, D., & Chen, X. (2022): Statistics of BY Draconis Chromospheric Variables MNRAS, 514, 4, 4932-4943.

My full publication list can be viewed on ADS.

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