Professor Sim will deliver a lecture titled 'Shedding light on Stellar Explosions: Supernovae, Kilonovae and Rolling Dice'.

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Abstract:

The explosion of a star is a dramatic event that can release enough energy to temporarily outshine a billion Suns. Understanding these explosions is important for many astrophysical questions: they forge the heavy chemical elements, inject gas and momentum into their host galaxies, and can be used to study the expansion history of the Universe. But how do these explosion occur, and what powers their spectacular displays?

In this talk I will review the theoretical work we carry out at QUB to understand stellar explosions, including the numerical radiation transport simulations we use to study supernovae and kilonovae. I will summarise our work on thermonuclear explosions of white-dwarf stars and argue that the diversity of transients revealed by modern observational surveys leads us to favour explosions occurring across a range of stellar masses via multiple mechanisms. I will also discuss the modelling of neutron-star mergers and kilonovae, including our HEAVYMETAL project that aims to determine which elements these explosions produce and understand the physics at work in these events