Astrophysics Seminars

May
13
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Physics of Enigmatic Fast Radio Bursts
Pawan Kumar
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are short duration (~ms), very bright, radio transients. Their detection in 2007 was a major unexpected discovery in astronomy in decades. Hunting for FRBs and measuring their physical properties have become one of the...

May
06
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Powerful Activity in Galaxies - the Wonder Years (aka Generation Alpha)
Stefi Baum
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Powerful extragalactic radio sources hosted in galaxies come in all shapes, sizes, powers, and presumably ages.  What might a young or nascent powerful radio source look like?  The class of compact powerful extragalactic radio sources are defined to...

Apr
29
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

R-process transients
Jennifer Barnes
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Rapid neutron capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis is responsible for the production of roughly half of the elements in the Periodic Table more massive than Iron. The unusual conditions needed for a successful r-process, in particular the requisite...

Apr
15
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Constraints to ultralight axion dark matter particles mass: the effect of self-interactions.
Alma González-Morales
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Ultralight axions have gained great relevance in modern cosmology, becoming a promising candidate to describe the dark matter of the Universe. Axion models in which the scalar field potential includes only the quadratic term, usually referred as the...

Apr
08
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Some Trends in Milky Way Research
Ken Freeman
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Supported by new observational capabilities, some of our basic concepts in Milky Way research have changed over the last several years. Our growing appreciation of the central bar of the Milky Way, the radial migration of stars, the Galactic thick...

Apr
01
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Tidal Deformation and Dissipation of Rotating Black Holes
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Black holes are never isolated in realistic astrophysical environments; instead, they are often perturbed by complicated external tidal fields. How does a black hole respond to these tidal perturbations? In this talk, I will discuss both the...

Mar
25
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Constraints on the maximum mass of neutron stars from gravitational wave events and prospects for electromagnetic precursor emission from inspiralling neutron star binaries.
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Since the first detection of a gravitational wave event of the merger of two neutron stars in 2017, two more detections in the neutron star mass range have been announced.  The first one, GW190425, involved an unusually massive neutron star, the...

Mar
18
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Instabilities and Dissipation in Collisionless Magnetized Turbulence
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

Many space and astrophysical plasmas, such as the solar wind, radiatively inefficient accretion flows onto black holes, and the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters (ICM), are hot and dilute, which makes them weakly collisional or even...

Mar
11
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Stellar clustering connecting the formation and evolution of galaxies to the formation and evolution of us
Diederik Kruijssen
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

The clustered nature of star formation leaves a long-term imprint on galaxies, stars, and planets. At young ages, stellar clustering subdivides galaxies into individual building blocks undergoing vigorous, feedback-driven life cycles that vary with...

Mar
04
2021

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Cosmology and more, from ACT
11:00am|Virtual Meeting

I will talk about our latest data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, a project measuring millimeter emission over half the sky. I will give a flavor of the cosmology we are interested in testing via a new view of the Cosmic Microwave Background...