Compact Objects

Catalog description

Although most stars are stable, they represent a constant battle between expansion, from the energy produced by nuclear fusion in their interiors, and collapse, due to gravity crushing the matter to the center of the star. When a star finishes burning its fuel, gravity wins the battle, and the star collapses to form a compact object. These are most commonly white dwarfs, but for massive stars, extreme and exotic compact objects are formed, namely neutron stars or black holes. In this course, the different physical properties of compact objects are discussed, and understood in terms of the fundamental physical process involved, and the reasons for their existence. The course covers stellar evolution, the different forms of stellar death and explosions in isolated and binary systems, the formation of various types of compact objects, their growth and accretion physics, winds, outflows and magnetic fields, their detectability and feedback from supermassive black holes and their influence on galaxy evolution. Numerous physical processes related to high energy astrophysics are intricately involved with compact objects – students will learn to explain these complex processes both qualitatively and mathematically. Through on-going in class discussions, presentations and independent research, students will demonstrate highly developed expert communication skills in explaining, and critiquing the appearance of behavior of compact objects and the physical processes associated with them.