Department of Physics
Florida State University

"Thermonuclear Supernovae and Cosmology, or Prospecting in the Age of Time-Domain Astronomy and Big Data"

April 3, 2019, 3:30 p.m., 499 DSL,

Abstract:

Type Ia Supernovae, thermonuclear explosions of White Dawrf stars, are one of the building block of modern astrophysics and cosmology which lead to the discovery of the Dark Energy which drives the Universe apart. To decipher the nature of the Dark energy, we need a better characterization of the spectra and the time evolution, so called light curves.

The needed improvements boil down to increase the information by the interplay of advanced physics models, high precision data from new wavelength ranges by ground based and space based instruments such as the Extremely Large Telescope, James Web Telescope (JWST), and data from large surveys such as ZTP or the Large Synoptic Telescope (LSST) which will provide an estimated 1,000,000 SNe or several petabyte/month but of low quality. The future is promising but requires handling of Big Data, advanced simulations and new AI methods to extract information between well-defined but large and inhomogeneous data sets.