[phas-dept] Mar. 9 (Thursday) 4 PM - Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

[Heungman Park]

Spring 2017 Colloquium

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Mar 9, Thursday, 4-5 PM in Science Building 127

(coffee and cookies will be served at 3:50 PM)

Astrophysics

Mapping out dense matter inside neutron stars
using accreting transients
Dr. Andrew Cumming

McGill University, Canada

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hfv1Ax2KjE0loxeDDPtpsCxN44gGm-ORwXz2UsQb1izBQ4105cXmh_tpWxAnVi4ziYAKWQnMb53E_k5V0lB0qx2zMmk6pFdu-tYK0PAfSYmQg3ug_tl3kHT287BQSe5idnXhkGiJ]

Dr. Andrew Cumming earned B.S. (1995) and M.S. (1996) degrees from the University of Cambridge, and received Ph.D. (2000) from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Santa Barbara, and then a Hubble Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Cumming joined the McGill Department of Physics in September 2004, becoming Associate Professor in 2009. He is an adjunct member of the Department of Physics, University of Montreal, a member of the Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Quebec (CRAQ), the Institut de Recherche sur les Exoplanetes (iREx), the JINA Center for the Evolution of the Elements (JINA-CEE), and Associate Director of the McGill Space Institute (MSI). More information about Dr. Cumming and his research can be found at
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~cumming/


Abstract:

Monitoring the response of neutron stars to transient events is emerging as a powerful new way to probe neutron star interiors. In this talk I will discuss the constraints on neutron star interiors coming from observations of accreting neutron stars. When accreting neutron star transients go into quiescence, X-ray observations on timescales of months to years show that the neutron star, heated by accretion, gradually cools. I will discuss the different pieces of physics that determine how quickly the star cools, and what we can learn from these observations. I will show that they give us access to the full range of physical conditions from the surface to the core. This includes an observational signature of the deepest regions of the inner crust, where the matter is likely in the form of nuclear pasta, and the core, including the neutrino emissivity and the first limits on the core heat capacity.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.tamuc.edu/pipermail/phas-dept/attachments/20170307/132dfdec/attachment.html>