Astrophysics Seminar by Esha Kundu

Astrophysics Seminar

Compact Objects in Globular Clusters

Speaker: Esha Kundu ((Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad))

तिथि और समय
कार्यक्रम का स्थान
Library Block Lecture Hall

अमूर्त

Globular clusters (GCs) are collections of stars and stellar remnants, held together within a small volume by mutual gravitational attraction. It is established that these clusters are over-abundant in compact binaries: those containing a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole (BH). While the existence of some of these classes of objects was known for a long time, the presence of stellar-mass BHs in GCs has only been revealed in the last decade. With the fact that BH-BH binaries are common in the local universe, as indicated by the detection of gravitational waves from the merging events of BH-BH binaries, there are broad scientific implications of the presence of stellar-mass BHs in globular clusters. Through our MAVERIC survey, we have acquired deep radio continuum images of a significant number of Milky Way GCs. I have carried out a detailed study of radio variability along with a multi-wavelength (optical and X-ray) examination of compact objects in some of these GCs to uncover the true nature of primary accreters. In this talk, I will discuss the existence of a mixed population of compact objects in these clusters with at least a few new BH candidates in one of the GCs. Furthermore, I will talk about the study I initiated to examine whether a substantial population of compact objects in the globular clusters are potential sources of fast radio bursts.