Astronomy Colloquium

Mergers, magnetars and multi-messengers

Stephen Smartt, Professor, Queens University Belfast,

Wide-field optical sky surveys are discovering a remarkable diversity in how stars merge, collapse and explode. A number of unusual and fast declining transients have been found, but their true volumetric rate appears low. The powering mechanism for many of these requires a source beyond radioactivity, plausibly a magnetic, rapidly spinning neutron star. In addition, the discovery of an electromagnetic counterpart to a pair of merging neutron stars showed that gravitational wave sources produce transients that emit photons from gamma rays to the radio. Spectral analysis provides a method to determine the composition, ejecta velocity and kinetic energy of the transients, which helps constrain their nature. I will highlight our recent searches for degenerate mergers and fast transients with ATLAS and Pan-STARRS. I will also show how spectroscopic analysis can uncover the composition of these unusual objects.

To view this colloquium, please visit: https://youtu.be/ZL7vwQ-aCZE

PLEASE NOTE TIME CHANGE FOR THIS COLLOQUIUM.

Event Sponsors:

Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy - More events from this Sponsor

For more information, please contact Mansi Kasliwal by email at [email protected] or visit https://www.astro.caltech.edu/.