Speaker
Stefan Rosswog
(The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University)
Description
Neutron star mergers had long been suspected to produce gravitational wave ”chirps”, gamma ray bursts and produce r-process elements. While overall convincing, all these conjectures were based on indirect arguments and none was proven directly. This changed on August 17, 2017: a gravitational wave signal from a merging neutron star binary was detected, closely followed by a short burst of gamma-rays and week-long transients across the electromagnetic spectrum coming from the radioactive decay of freshly synthesised r-process elements. In this talk I will give an overview over these recent events with a particular focus on the production of heavy elements.
Primary author
Stefan Rosswog
(The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University)
