Pulsars, rapidly-rotating and highly magnetised neutron stars, can be utilised as tools in the study of many fundamental physical questions, most notably in the application of binary pulsars to the study of gravitational theories such as General Relativity. The discovery of ever-more relativistic binary systems than those presently known will allow for such tests to probe even deeper into the...
Since its discovery more than one hundred years ago, the origin of the cosmic-ray flux measured on Earth is still unknown: in order to explain the region under the knee, supernova remnants (SNRs) are usually addressed as PeV cosmic accelerators. In particular, young SNRs are potential candidates since they might act as PeVatrons at least during some initial stage of their evolution: among...
Supernova remnants (SNRs) and pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) have long been considered potential sources of Galactic cosmic rays. Radiating from the radio band to gamma rays, these objects are ideal to study the acceleration of cosmic rays. In particular, understanding the nature of the gamma-ray emission allows probing the population of high-energy particles (leptons or hadrons) and inferring the...
In the last years we have obtained a very detailed picture of the early Universe, measuring the intensity and polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the relic radiation from the Big Bang. The last two space missions WMAP and Planck, and also previous ground-based and balloon experiments, allowed us to consolidate the precision Cosmology era. Nowadays, ground-based experiments...
It is genreally accepted that active galactic nuclei (AGN) are powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of masses $M \sim 10^{6-9}\, \rm M_\odot$. The matter is thought to accrete in a disc that is geometrically thin and optically thick, emitting the bulk of its light in the optical/ultraviolet range. Moreover, AGN are strong X-ray emitters. These X-rays are thought to be...
Cosmic rays are believed to play an essential role in determining the chemistry and the evolution of molecular clouds. This is because they are usually considered to be the main ionization agent of these star-forming regions. In this talk, we will examine such hypothesis from a theoretical point of view for the case of diffuse clouds. This will be achieved by studying the cosmic-ray spectra in...
In the last 50 years, almost 200 molecules have been detected in space. Some of them, such as carbon monoxide (CO), water (H$_2$O) and ammonia (NH$_3$) are very simple, but others are formed by more than 10 atoms. The astrochemistry field in astrophysics aims to investigate the chemistry of space by means of observations, laboratory experiments as well as theoretical studies. In particular,...
