Lives, Deaths and Afterlives of Stars
Stellar Astrophysics Department at MPA
Understanding how stars work is part of understanding our own cosmic history, since we are made of “stardust”: the oxygen we breathe, the carbon in our bodies and the iron in our blood were formed by stars that have now long gone. The stellar department focuses on open research questions that relate to all aspects of how stars work: how they live their lives (alone, in pairs or as multiples), how they die (gently or giving rise to spectacular supernova explosions), as well as the afterlives of their remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes), which can be probed through gravitational waves.
Senior Researchers
is scientific director of the stellar department, which focuses on open questions related to the lives, deaths, and afterlives of stars. Her own interests have so far been centred on massive stars, and binary stars in particular. But her interests are broad and range from stellar physics, interiors and evolution to applications including the astrophysics of gravitational wave progenitors, supernovae and more exotic stellar transients, stellar populations across cosmic time, chemical enrichment and feedback.
studies topics related to supernovae and neutron stars, including nuclear and neutrino astrophysics, especially working on the physics and detailed numerical modelling of the outcomes of stellar core collapse. Thomas was awarded the 2022 Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society for research on the core-collapse supernova mechanism, explosive nucleosynthesis, and supernova neutrino physics.
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aims to understand the physics of stars and stellar interactions, especially in binary stars, and the consequences of those stellar interactions, including for the diversity of supernovae, other stellar transients, and compact-object binaries, as well as how such interactions may affect the variety of apparently “normal” stars. Stephen is interested both in physical modelling of stellar phenomena and in improving our ability to use population information to constrain models for such physics.
is interested in a wide range of astrophysics problems with a focus on cosmological simulations, galaxy evolution, dynamical phases of stellar evolution, and thermonuclear explosions. His main tool to learn about those problems are numerical simulations. He is interested in the improvement of existing and development of new numerical methods as well as their efficient implementation on the largest supercomputers, and their application to practical astrophysical problems.
simulates the formation of individual galaxies and their interstellar medium and is particularly interested in improving the numerical representation of the complex processes driving galaxy-scale feedback from star formation and AGN activity.
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is interested in the physics of accretion, interaction of matter and radiation under extreme astrophysical conditions of high temperature and pressure, strong gravity and high magnetic field.
