5–30 Jun 2017
Nordita, Stockholm
Europe/Stockholm timezone

White dwarf - neutron star and white dwarf - black hole binaries

Speaker

Ross Church

Description

Binaries containing a white dwarf and a neutron star, and their more massive relatives containing a white dwarf and a black hole, are interesting for a number of reasons. Their existance and properties allow us to constrain the evolution of interacting binary stars, probing a number of important poorly-understood physical processes such as common-envelope evolution and neutron-star kicks. They may be observable with the LISA gravitational-wave experiment. Following gravitational-wave emission, their merger may produce luminous transients, and they are a possible candidate progenitor for calcium-rich "gap" transients. I will discuss the theory of their formation and of their ultimate destruction after gravitational-wave inspiral.

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