Kenta Hotokezaka - Kilonovae

Friday 26 Sept 2025, 10:30 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

Neutron rich material ejected from neutron star mergers has long 
been considered as a promising site of r-process nucleosynthesis. 
This picture was confirmed with the discovery of the neutron star merger,
GW170817, which produced a radioactively powered optical transient, known as a kilonova.
Since 2017, several additional kilonova candidates have been reported following  gamma-ray bursts,
including one observed with JWST. Significant efforts have been devoted to preparing atomic data
and developing non-LTE radiation transfer models to interpret these observations and identify elements in kilonovae.
I will talk kilonova observations, progress in non-LTE modelings, and efforts toward elemental identification.