Conveners
Plenary Session: Gravitational Waves
- Sven De Rijcke
Plenary Session: New Facilities and Data
- Maarten Baes (UGent)
Plenary Session: Observational Cosmology
- Arjen van der Wel
Plenary Session: Disks and Accretion
- Hans Van Winckel (KULeuven)
Black hole-neutron star (BHNS) mergers have recently been detected through their gravitational-wave (GW) emission. Such mergers could also produce electromagnetic emission as a short gamma-ray burst (sGRB), and/or an sGRB afterglow upon interaction with the circummerger medium. In this talk, we present new simulations on the expected detection rates with the Square Kilometre Array Phase 1...
The concurrent detection of GW 170817 and GRB 170817A secured the connection between binary neutron star (BNS) mergers and at least some short-duration gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), allowing us to link several aspects of the two phenomena. Among the links opened by this connection, one is between the host galaxies of sGRBs and the environment of BNS mergers. From the study of sGRB hosts we can...
The common practice of model validation in statistical methods is not as widespread in astronomy. Too often, models are assumed to describe observations even when there is no agreement between the two. To improve this, we propose a practical framework for assessing the consistency between observations and astrophysical models in a model-independent manner. The consistency test uses a...
Detecting cosmic rays using the radio emission generated in extensive air showers that form when cosmic rays interact in the atmosphere has proven to be a highly effective technique. Existing radio telescopes can detect this signal, and the dense antenna spacing of the LOFAR telescope and the upcoming SKA telescope make these instruments ideal to probe the features of radio emission in great...
On June 13 2022 Gaia Data Release 3 will be made public. This release will feature a major increase in the availability of astrophysical information on sources throughout the Milky Way, including stellar parameters and abundances (some 500 million sources), spectra for some 220 million sources, and parameters of variable and binary stars, among many other new data products. I will provide a...
I discuss briefly the current status of JWST commissioning and the planning of the first cycle
KiDS, the Kilo-Degree Survey, has mapped the distribution of dark matter using gravitational lensing. The final 'Legacy' analysis is underway, but results based on 2/3 of the data are available and provide interesting tests of the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, including intriguing discrepancies. I will discuss these results as well as look forward to the improvements that can be...
The KiloDegree Survey has proven to be a fertile training ground in preparation for Euclid, ESA's satellite to study the nature of dark matter and dark energy. In this talk I present some recent highlights from KiDS, with a focus on how observations can be used to account for astrophysical sources of bias, thus improving the fidelity of current and future constraints on cosmological parameters.
The first population of X-ray binaries are expected to affect the thermal and ionization states of the gas in the early Universe. Although these X-ray sources are predicted to have important implications for high-redshift observable signals, such as the hydrogen 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn and the cosmic X-ray background, their properties are poorly explored and theoretical models are...
Observations of the redshifted 21-cm signal of neutral hydrogen from the Cosmic Dawn and Reionization epochs promise to provide valuable insights into the (astro)physical processes that governed the structure formation in the early Universe. The AARTFAAC wide-field imager of the LOFAR telescope is an excellent instrument to measure the redshifted 21-cm signal on large angular scales from the...
Before the end of the epoch of reionization, the Hydrogen in the Universe was predominantly neutral. This leads to strong attenuation of Lyman alpha lines of z>6 galaxies in the intergalactic medium. Nevertheless, Lyman alpha has been detected up to very high redshifts (z~9) for several especially UV luminous galaxies. Here, we test to what extent the galaxy's local environment might impact...
The coupling between radio and X-ray luminosity is an important diagnostic tool to study the connection between the accretion inflow and jet outflow for low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Moreover, the comparison of NS- and BH-LMXBs provides useful information about the role of compact objects in launching jets. Interestingly, studies have shown discrepancies between the radio-X-ray coupling of...
Circumstellar discs are found at different evolutionary stages of stars. In this talk, I will focus on a class of evolved stellar systems that show stable circumbinary discs of gas and dust, namely post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) binary systems. These circumbinary discs show remarkable, but unexpected, similarities with planet forming discs around young stellar objects. Using infrared...
