Speaker:  Dr. Madappa Prakash, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University

Title:   Mergers of Compact Binary Stars

Abstract:  The most extreme collision between two massive objects is the gravitational wave-induced inspiral and merger of a compact object (neutron star or strange quark matter star) with a black hole in a binary system. These events are believed to be frequent enough to account for some fractions of the cosmological gamma-ray bursts and the heavy elements produced through the so-called r-process. There are significant differences between black hole-neutron star mergers and black hole-strange star mergers as a result of differing mass-radius profiles. These scenarios result in dramatically different gravitational wave signatures, which could be observed by second-generation gravity-wave detectors (LIGO, VIRGO, GEO600, etc.).

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