Stephan Rosswog (Stockholm University) Neutron star mergers as cosmic factories of heavy elements

by Stephan Rosswog (SU)

Thursday 8 Apr 2021, 15:15 → 17:15 Europe/Stockholm

Neutron star mergers had long been suspected to produce gravitational
waves, gamma ray bursts and -by some- to produce heavy "rapid neutron
capture" or "r-process" elements. While overall convincing, all these
conjectures were only based on indirect arguments and none was proven
by direct observations.
This changed on August 17, 2017: a gravitational wave signal from a
merging neutron star binary was detected, closely followed by a
short burst of gamma-rays and week-long transients across the
electromagnetic spectrum coming from the radioactive decay of
freshly synthesised r-process elements. In this talk I will give an
overview over neutron star mergers, their roles as precious laboratories
for (astro-)physics and I will focus in particular on their role for
the production of heavy elements.
 

http://video.albanova.se/arc2021_12.html