Novelties in Stellar Evolution: Asteroseismology of Fast Rotators
Space asteroseismology - the study of waves inside stars from high-precision space data - saw its birth less than two decades ago, yet has already revolutionized the theory of stellar structure and evolution. In this talk, 2022 Kavli laureate Conny Aerts will introduce the basic principles of asteroseismology and explain its capacity to probe the internal physics and chemistry of stars. She will highlight how various forces acting upon the stellar gas imply waves of different nature and probing power, covering a wide range of wave frequencies. Applications to sun-like stars and red giants are meanwhile standard practise and briefly discussed. The second part of the talk focuses on applications to stars of intermediate and high mass, which tend to be fast rotators. We discuss how gravito-inertial modes lead to estimates of the internal rotation and chemical mixing in the deep interior of the stars. We illustrate how gravito-inertial asteroseismology triggers opportunities for better stellar evolution models. We end with exciting opportunities for this booming research field of astrophysics, from data-driven modelling based on the integrated exploitation of the ongoing NASA TESS and future ESA PLATO space missions, Gaia astrometry, and ground-based spectroscopic surveys.
The Rosseland Lecturer 2024
This year’s Rosseland Lecture will be held by Professor Conny Aerts from the Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven (Belgium)
Conny's research covers stellar astrophysics, including stellar structure & evolution and variable stars. She is a pioneer of asteroseismology, which received a major boost thanks to the CoRoT (2006+), Kepler (2009+), and TESS (2018+) space missions. Prior to high-precision space photometry, Conny developed rigorous mathematical methods to detect and identify non-radial stellar oscillations in high-resolution time-series spectroscopy. Her team also designed and applied statistical classification methods in a machine-learning context, discovering numerous gravity-mode pulsators in space photometry. As Chair in Asteroseismology at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Conny introduced herself into the topic of subdwarf stars, their binarity and pulsations, with current focus on development and exploitation of BlackGEM in tandem with gravitational wave studies.
Conny is the 2022 receipt of the Kavli prize in Astrophysics and acts as corresponding Principle Investigator of the 2022 ERC Synergy grant 4D-STAR.
The Rosseland Lecture
The Rosseland Lecture is held annually by the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, in memory of Norway’s foremost astrophysicist, and founder of our institute, Professor Svein Rosseland (1894 – 1985). The Rosseland Lecturers are internationally renowned, outstanding astrophysicists. The Rosseland Lectures hold a semi-popular level and are open for all.
The lecture will be streamed on YouTube channel of the Science Library.