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Institut d'Astrophysique et
de Géophysique (Bât. B5c)

Quartier Agora
Allée du 6 août, 19C
B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)
Belgique

Tel.: 04.366.9779
Fax: 04.366.9729
Fast rewind Previous year Seminars: Archives 2024    
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Previous month Next month January 2024
Next seminar  1st seminar: thursday 25 january, 16h00
SN 1987A in its third decade imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope: Evolution of the ejecta and equatorial ring
Sophie Rosu (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden)

The spatially resolved view of the transition into a young supernova (SN) remnant offered by SN 1987A makes it the most thoroughly studied SN so far, from ground to space, at all wavelengths. Its evolution has notably been followed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) since its launch in 1990 with an excellent spatial resolution.

We present the recently (2022) acquired HST imaging observations of SN 1987A. For the first time since 2009, the observations cover the entire optical domain between 200 and 1100 nm. We make use of these and earlier observations to study the recent evolution of the spectral energy distribution (SED) and morphology of all parts of the system. We also use the annual imaging in the blue and red filters to provide lightcurves for the different parts of the system.

The recent imaging provides us with a spatially resolved view of both the freely expanding ejecta and the interaction of this latter with the circumstellar medium, revealing the asymmetric ejecta structure in increasingly greater detail.

We observe a decay in the lightcurve of the equatorial ring (ER), explained by the continuous fading of the hotspots that started ∼8000 days after the explosion. A noticeable increase in the ejecta flux is observed until day ∼ 11000, after which the flux seems to flatten around a constant value, owing to the X-ray input coming from the ER.

We do not observe any clear evidence for a point source at the center of the ejecta that would be associated with the direct detection of a compact object. We discuss the implication of our findings in terms of both the energy sources contributing to the ejecta emission and limits on the compact object.
Previous month Next month February 2024
Previous seminar Next seminar 2nd seminar: thursday 08 february, 16h00
Physics opportunities of CEvNS experiments
Diego Aristizabal Sierra (Santa Maria U., Valparaiso)

Experimental facilities that study coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, or CEvNS (pronounced sevens), provide a rich environment for precise measurements of Standard Model parameters and searches of new physics. In this talk, I will discuss a few aspects of this program involving solar neutrinos and third-generation dark-matter detectors as well as directional detectors in the Fermilab neutrino beamlines.
Previous seminar Next seminar 3rd seminar: thursday 22 february, 16h00
Future "firsts" in gravitational-wave observations
David Keitel (IEB, Mallorque)

Beyond the highly successful detection efforts for compact binary coalescences (CBCs), gravitational-wave astronomy also comprises other long-standing search efforts, such as those for continuous waves (CWs) from individual spinning neutron stars. Furthermore, the field is diversifying with new searches for additional astrophysical effects and source types.

I will summarise some recent progress towards three such potential "next first detections":
  • . The search for signatures of gravitational lensing on CBC signals, where heavy masses along the signals' long voyage to Earth can magnify, multiply or deform them. Here I will focus in particular on recent work regarding the effects of waveform systematics and Bayesian sampler choices, which are crucial to understand for making robust detections.
  • . A wide range of searches pursued within the LVK collaboration for known or unknown neutron stars as CW emitters, or even for more exotic sources involving dark matter.
  • . Searches for long-duration transient CW-like signals from newborn or perturbed neutron stars, such as binary neutron star remnants or glitching pulsars.
Previous month Next month March 2024
Previous seminar Next seminar 4th seminar: thursday 28 march, 16h00
Searching for Evidence of Life Beyond the Solar System with the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the GMT-Consortium Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF)
Andrew Szentgyorgyi (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Two of the highest priority programs in astrophysics are the discovery and characterization of Earth 2.0 – rocky, Earth-mass exoplanets orbiting Solar-type stars in their habitable zone and the search for biomarkers in the atmospheres of exoplanets in general, The first program is enabled by precision radial velocity (PRV) measurements of the line-of-sight reflex motion of host stars in response to the gravitational influence of low-mass exoplanets that orbit those stars. The search for biomarkers and the characterization of the molecular composition of exoplanets requires extremely high spectral resolution spectrographs on large aperture telescopes. The G-CLEF spectrograph has been designed to provide these capabilities. Before deployment at the GMT, G-CLEF will be delivered to the Magellan telescopes in 2027, to do several pathfinder observational programs that will allow observers to optimize G-CLEF for its delivery to the GMT in 2032. A key project for G@M+MagAO-X will be to resolve and search for O2 in the atmosphere of a habitable zone planet orbiting the star nearest to the Sun – Proxima Cen b. The talk will discuss several aspects of habitability, habitability searches and several technical innovations we will deploy to optimize the Proxima Cen b habitability search.
Previous month Next month April 2024
Previous seminar Next seminar 5th seminar: thursday 11 april, 16h00
From heartbeat to heartbreak: the story about eccentric binary systems, tidally excited oscillations and collapsing tidal waves
Piotr Kolaczek-Szymanski (STAR - ULiège)

Currently, no one is surprised by the information that most stars in the Universe reside in binary or even multiple systems. Furthermore, in the case of massive stars (with initial masses >8Msun), we can be almost certain that they have at least one companion, which is most likely also a high- or intermediate-mass star. This means that the evolution of massive stars cannot be studied without taking into account their common binarity. Due to the relatively young age of these systems, many of them still have eccentric orbits. However, significant non-zero orbital eccentricity is not restricted only to young massive stars, but it is also observed in evolved systems, containing red giant(s). The tidal forces acting within them determine the further fate of the system, which under favorable conditions can lead to the stellar merger at very different stages of evolution. Periodically varying tidal potential leads to a series of interesting and significant phenomena from an evolutionary point of view. Among them, so-called heartbeat stars are the prominent ones, due to their characteristic light curves resembling an electrocardiogram. In eccentric binary systems, we can also observe tidally induced oscillations, which directly participate in the evolution of the system's orbit, leading to its accelerated tightening. In some systems, the components pass so close to each other at periastron that the resulting huge tidal deformation cannot return to equilibrium and spectacularly collapses onto the star's surface. During my seminar, I will discuss all these processes, primarily considering the effects of my recently defended PhD thesis and outlining certain research plans for the future.
Previous seminar Next seminar 6th seminar: thursday 18 april, 16h00
Linking stellar compositions and planet formation: implications for solar models and stellar surface abundances
Masanobu Kunitomo (Kurume University)

Stars grow by accretion from the protoplanetary disk where planets are formed. Planet formation theory predicts that the composition of the disk gas, and thus of the gas accreted by protostars, must have been variable: the growth and inward drift of dust in the disk leads to the generation of a temporal "pebble wave" of increased metallicity, followed by a phase in which the exhaustion of the pebbles and the formation of planets leads to the accretion of metal-poor gas. How does accretion affect stellar composition? First I will show our solar models with the accretion in the early Solar System which can have a larger central metallicity by up to 5% and thus higher neutrino fluxes, demonstrating that the formation history of the Solar System constitutes a key element in resolving the "solar modeling problem". I will also discuss the implications for chemical peculiarities in other stars: the surface compositions of refractory-poor solar twins, binary systems, and lambda Boo stars.
Previous seminar Next seminar 7th seminar: thursday 25 april, 16h00
A Few Topics in Nonlinear and Binary Asteroseismology
Zhao Guo (KULeuven)

Stellar oscillations are not necessarily linear. Some oscillation modes can be weakly nonlinear and may produce daughter modes via parametric instability. This process is a potential amplitude limitation mechanism that determines the final observed oscillation amplitude, as demonstrated in Delta Scuti stars and Slowly Pulsating B stars. Observational signatures of nonlinear mode coupling include periodic amplitude and phase modulations. The behavior of a coupled-mode system can be rich and complex, including period doubling, intermittency, and various pathways to chaos. In some binary star systems with elliptical orbits, tidal forces can directly induce stellar gravity modes, manifesting as luminosity variations at orbital harmonic frequencies. These tidally excited oscillations (TEOs) can mostly be understood within the framework of linear theory. However, nonlinearity can induce non-orbital harmonic TEOs, and we can use these secondary modes to pioneer a new approach to asteroseismology. Finally, I will present another aspect of the nonlinear effect: wave-mean flow interactions. The quadratic terms in the wave equations can modify the background mean flow, and vice versa. We employ a quasi-linear approximation to study the spin-up of the solar core by the ingoing gravity waves induced by a planet, comparing it with direct numerical simulations.
Previous month Next month May 2024
Previous seminar Next seminar 8th seminar: thursday 16 may, 16h00
A multimessenger GW-GRB study of the sGRB population and its future developments
Matteo Pracchia (Université de Liège)

The unambiguous joint detection of GRB 170817A and GW170817 has been the long-awaited smoking gun for the association between short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) and the merger of binary neutron stars (BNS) systems. The aforementioned sGRB, however, was extremely close and had an unexpectedly low measured luminosity when compared to the other observed sGRBs, suggesting that there is a sub-luminous fraction of the GRB population which is undetected at the usually measured distances.

This work aims to characterize the low-luminosity part of the sGRB population through a multi-messenger GW-GRB Bayesian study. The sGRB population is described via its luminosity probability distribution, modelled through an extension of a broken power law whose parameters have already been constrained through mid-high luminosity sGRB observations. The parameters of this power-law extension, i.e. the low luminosity power index and the low-luminosity cutoff, are constrained through a Bayesian analysis which exploits the results from the modelled GW follow-up analysis of the short GRBs detected during the first three observing runs of the International Gravitational-Wave observatory Network (IGWN).

The results obtained allow us to define the luminosity distribution at lower values for the sGRB population and to give an estimate of the value found for the astrophysical sGRB rate and the joint GW-GRB detection rate for the next IGWN observing runs. There are, nonetheless, some upgrades to the method used for this study that could give a more precise and complete outline of the astrophysical sGRB population.
Previous seminar Next seminar 9th seminar: thursday 23 may, 16h00
TBA
Dixeena Lopez (Université de Liège)
Previous month Next month June 2024
Previous seminar 10th seminar: wednesday 26 june, 16h00 
TBA
Victoria Bonidie (Pittsburgh University)
University of Liège > Faculty of Sciences > Department of Astrophysics, Geophysics and Oceanography : CoWebAGO, June 2009.