| Speaker: | Maria Eugenia Camisassa (Politechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona) |
|---|---|
| Title: | White Dwarf Stars: New Questions from Big Data of the Gaia Space Mission |
| Date (JST): | Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 13:30 - 15:00 |
| Place: | Seminar Room A |
| Abstract: |
White dwarf stars are the most common endpoint of stellar evolution. Therefore, these numerous, old and compact objects provide valuable information on the late stages of stellar evolution, the physics of dense plasma and the structure and evolution of our Galaxy. The ESA Gaia space mission has revolutionized this research field, providing parallaxes and multi-band photometry for nearly 360.000 white dwarfs. Furthermore, this data, combined with spectroscopical and spectropolarimetric observations, have provided new information on their chemical abundances and magnetic fields. This large data set has raised new questions on the nature of white dwarfs, demanding a thorough understanding of the physics that governs their evolution and a proper statistical analysis of their collective properties. In this talk, I will summarize these questions and I will describe possible explanations for them, on the basis of detailed theoretical models and population synthesis studies. |
