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.
