Australia Telescope National Facility

Colloquium Double Header: Steve Croft & David Kaplan

Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

Steve Croft (UC Berkeley / Eureka Scientific)

Probing Supermassive Black Hole Growth with Next Generation Radio Telescopes
A new generation of survey telescopes will change our understanding of how black holes grow. Whether by mergers that perturb the fabric of spacetime, by swallowing huge volumes of gas, or by shredding stars that pass too close, growing black holes will make their presence known across the electromagnetic spectrum in wide-field time domain surveys. I will focus on the capabilities of the Square Kilometer Array and its pathfinders, which will provide radio variability information with cadences of days for thousands of active galactic nuclei, as well as constraining the statistics of
tidal disruptions and binary inspirals. I will present results from the Allen Telescope Array, and plans for surveys with the Murchison Widefield Array and with SKA itself. I will also emphasize the importance of multi-wavelength data for understanding the populations of sources that these surveys will see.

David Kaplan (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

Recent Millisecond Pulsar-White Dwarf Binary Discoveries
We will discuss a number of exciting millisecond pulsars discoveries, along with their binary companions. These include: a low-gravity, metal-rich object which appears to be evolving into a helium white dwarf; a millisecond pulsar in a stellar triple system, and what might be the coolest massive white dwarf ever observed. We will discuss the details of these systems and their implications for our understanding of neutron star formation, white dwarf structure, evolution, and cooling.