Lapham 160

Dr. Astrid Lamberts, Caltech.
Listening to Binary Stars Through Cosmic History

With the first detections of gravitational waves, it has now become possible to “listen” to the final stages of binary black holes and neutron stars. These systems are the remnants of massive stars that likely formed billions of years before the gravitational wave event. At that time the Universe was very different from now. If we want to use gravitational wave events to understand how massive binary stars evolve, it is very important to model the conditions of their formation throughout cosmic history

Dr. Michael Geracie, Postdoc in the Center for Quantum Mathematics & Physics (QMAP) UC-Davis
Galilean Geometry in Condensed Matter Physics

In this talk, we discuss methods and applications of Newton-Cartan geometry in condensed matter systems. Newton-Cartan geometry provides an efficient means to impose Galilean spacetime symmetries within field theory, which has historically been much trickier than the relativistic case.

Accreting Neutron Stars and the Physics of Dense Matter

Neutron stars are composed of the densest observable matter in nature and occupy the intellectual frontier between astrophysics, nuclear physics, and, now, gravitational physics. Current and planned nuclear experiments on heavy nuclei and observations of neutron stars in both electromagnetic and gravitational waves will be exploring the nature of dense matter from complimentary approaches.

Professor Yuval Garini, Physics Dept. and Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar Ilan University, Israel

Studying Chromatin Dynamics by Advanced Live Cell Imaging Methods

The DNA in a human cell (which is ~3 meters long) is packed in a tiny nucleus of ~10 μm radius. Although it is dynamic, it is well organized. By using advanced microscopy methods for live cell imaging, we study the mechanisms that organizes the chromatin in the nucleus. We identified a dynamic structure that was not known before that we call the ‘DNA matrix’.

Professor Ed Lattman, Principal Research Scientist at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute; Professor of Structural Biology & Materials Design and Innovation at the University of Buffalo (SUNY)

Of Course, an STC is Only a Means to An End, Which Is (Hopefully) Science

NSF Science and Technology Centers are large, prestigious awards intended to enable transformative research that cannot readily be carried out by individual investigators.

The Shocking Ways Stars Die.
Dr. Tony Piro, The Carnegie Observatories
Supernovae are amazing cosmic explosions where for a few weeks to months a single star can become as bright as a billion stars combined. Even though supernovae are crucial to a wide range of areas in astrophysics, from producing the elements to galactic evolution to measuring the accelerating expansion of our Universe, the actual progenitors are frustratingly elusive in many cases.

"Rethinking the Fundamentals of Classical Nova Explosions"
Laura Chomiuk, Michigan State University
Over the past few years, a revolution has been taking place in our understanding of classical novae, largely driven by the discovery of GeV gamma-rays emanating from these garden-variety explosions. These gamma-rays hint that shocks are energetically important---perhaps even dominant---in novae.

"Feedback in Dwarf Galaxies at z>2"
Ryan Trainor, Franklin & Marshall College
High-redshift dwarf galaxies (L << L*) are high-priority science targets for both JWST and current surveys: these galaxies appear extremely sensitive to stellar feedback, and they are likely to dominate the ionizing photon budget during the epoch of reionization (EoR). However, the physical properties of the stellar populations and interstellar media in these galaxies are difficult to constrain because of their extremely faint continuum and line emission.

"Velocity Gradients as a New Way of Studying Galactic Magnetic Fields"
Alex Lazarian, UW-Madison
I shall introduce three new techniques of magnetic field tracing. The first two use Doppler-shifted emission lines and employs the gradients of velocity in order to trace magnetic fields in the diffuse interstellar media as well as to trace regions of star formation associated with the gravitational collapse. The differences between these techniques is that they use different observationally available measures, i.e. the first one uses the velocity centroids and the other uses velocity channel maps.

"The Cosmological Context of Star Formation"
Tom Quinn, University of Washington
On the molecular cloud scale, star formation is a very complicated process that involves gravitational collapse, radiative transfer and magnetic fields on sub-parsec scales. On the other hand, there are a number of observed relationships between star formation and galactic and cosmic environment such as star formation rate - molecular surface density relationship in disk galaxies, the stellar mass - halo mass relationship, and the evolution of the star formation rate over time.