Cosmic Fireworks: testing physics through the universe most powerful explosions

A cura di Eleonora Troja (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata)

martedì 11 giu 2024, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

SEMINARIO CHIAMATA DIRETTA

Neutron stars and black holes are the densest and most extreme objects in the universe. It thus comes as no surprise that their catastrophic encounters give birth to spectacular cosmic fireworks, producing copious amounts of gravitational waves and light. As demonstrated by the breakthrough discovery of GW170817, the study of these explosions holds great potential to tackle a wide range of fundamental issues: from the production of heavy r-process metals in our Solar neighborhood to the expansion rate of the universe, from the behavior of matter at extreme densities to its acceleration near the speed of light. In this talk, I’ll describe how I chase these rare stellar encounters using a three-pronged approach that includes gravitational waves, gamma-ray bursts, and kilonovae. I’ll present some recent results from my group, discuss their implications for gravitational wave and nuclear astrophysics, and highlight the open questions that I strive to address  using the transformative power of multi-messenger astronomy.