Gap Transients: giant eruptions or stellar mergers?

LOCATION: Sexten Primary School - Via Panorama 6, Sexten

DETAILS

The incidence of celestial transients, once thought to be rare examples of “new stars”, is becoming dramatically more frequent and varied. By nearly a century ago, the “stellae novae” described in historical records had already been distinguished in Classical Novae (CNe) and Super Novae (SNe). Nowadays, these broad categories contain subspecies, besides the canonical types, e.g. sub-luminous SNe, super-luminous SNe, and kilo-novae. However, a growing number of transients are being detected by current automated surveys that cannot be explained by “traditional” explosion channels, and even more will certainly be discovered with imminent surveys such as LSST and WFIRST. These “anomalous” transients are generally grouped under the moniker Intermediate Luminosity Optical Transients (ILOTs) or Gap Transients. Their absolute magnitudes at outburst are intermediate between CNe (MV ~ -7 to -9 mag) and of SNe (MV ~ -15 to -22 mag). They are a heterogeneous collection of objects that includes non-degenerate stellar mergers, giant eruption on massive stars, luminous blue variables and intermediate luminosity red transients. ILOTs are often merely categorized phenomenologically rather than based on the nature of their progenitor or the physical mechanism responsible for the observed outburst. This is especially true for extragalactic transients. The workshop will gather together a group of experts on surveys, follow-up observations, stellar evolutionary theory, stellar physics, and population synthesis aimed at confronting the observational properties of each subclass with theory.

The goals are to:

1) establish a firm phenomenological taxonomy of each ILOT and then connect with the mechanism(s) producing each type;
2) characterize the environment where each type typically occur;
3) assess the importance of binarity in the shaping of the transients, their parent population and their descendants;
4) propose programmatic guidelines, strategies and resources for the broader astrophysics community to optimize the discovery and characterization of ILOTs from the era of large area sky surveys.

This is a workshop, so come prepared to work and discuss and not just present.

Confirmed invited speaker: Matteo Cantiello (CCA Flatiron Inst.), Peter Hoeflich (FL State Univ.), Natalia Ivanova (Alberta Univ.), Robert Izzard (University of Surrey), Tomasz Kaminski (NCAC), Ashish Mahabal (Caltech), Stanley Owocki (Univ. of Delaware), Andrea Pastorello (INAF-OAPD), Ondrej Pejcha (Charles Univ. of Prague).

The number of participants is limited to about 30 (including a maximum of 5-6 senior PhD) – in this specific topic or closely related area – because of limited space, distancing prescription, and, last but not least, to maximize the time for discussion.

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FEE

WORKSHOP CODE FOR PAYMENT

ORGANIZERS

Organizers Elena Mason Steve B. Howell Steven N. Shore