Astrophysics Seminars

Dec
07
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Exploring the Dynamics of Supercritical Accretion onto the Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Accretion-powered X-ray pulsars are neutron stars that accrete matter from a companion star in a binary system, which exhibit fascinating dynamics. The strong magnetic field of the neutron star guides material onto the magnetic poles, which are...

Nov
30
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Gravitational-wave signatures of supermassive black holes
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) consist of a set of regularly monitored millisecond pulsars with extremely stable rotational periods. The arrival time of pulses can be altered by the passage of gravitational waves (GWs) between them and the Earth, thus...

Nov
16
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Data-Driven Strong Lensing Science in the Era of Large Sky Surveys
Laurence Perreault-Levasseur
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Despite the remarkable success of the standard model of cosmology, the lambda CDM model, at predicting the observed structure of the universe over many scales, very little is known about the fundamental nature of its principal constituents: dark...

Nov
08
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

The Albedos and Phase Curves of Celestial Bodies
11:00am|Rubenstein Commons | Meeting Room 5

The albedo of a celestial body is the fraction of incident starlight reflected by it. The study of the albedos of Solar System objects is at least a century old, at least in the Western world. As examples: Bond (1861) speculated on the near-unity...

Nov
02
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

GRMHD simulations of radiatively non-inefficient black hole accretion
Monika Moscibrodzka
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

X-ray binaries are known to exhibit different spectral states which are associated with different black hole accretion modes. In particular the geometry of the hot accretion flow in hard spectral state is still not fully understood. Recent...

Oct
26
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Searching for “Lonely” Dark Objects with Microlensing
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Galactic microlensing is the only known method to discover dark objects ranging from isolated stellar-mass black holes (BHs) down to Earth-mass free-floating planets (FFPs). The recent success of interferometric resolution of microlensed images with...

Oct
19
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Prospects of X-ray imaging of the outer heliosphere (and other "astrospheres")
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Charge-exchange (CX) collisions of the solar wind (SW) high-ionization-state minor ions with LISM neutrals are responsible for much of X-ray production in the outer heliosphere. In this talk, we discuss numerical modeling of the heliospheric CX X...

Oct
12
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Unraveling Particle Acceleration and the Nonthermal Universe
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

Interpreting observations of extreme astrophysical phenomena requires a detailed understanding of particle acceleration in astrophysical environments. These accelerated particles, known as cosmic rays, approximately follow a power-law distribution...

Oct
05
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Dancing with the Black Holes: Spin Secrets of Merging Binaries
Vishal Baibhav
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

 Gravitational waves have uncovered a treasure trove of nearly 90 merging black holes and neutron stars, each with its own unique story to tell. In this talk, our focus centers on black hole spins, seeking to decipher the secrets hidden within...

Sep
28
2023

Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

Probing dark matter with resonant dynamics of the Galactic bar
Rimpei Chiba
11:00am|Bloomberg Lecture Hall

I will present a new evidence for dark matter from the measurement of the deceleration of the Galactic bar. Galactic bars are linear structures that form and rotate at the center of galactic disks. In the presence of dark matter haloes, these bars...