TAPIR Seminar

In person: 370 Cahill. To Join via Zoom: 851 0756 7442

ABSTRACT: Understanding the evolution of massive stars, from advanced nuclear burning through compact-object formation and subsequent binary interactions, is key to explaining energetic transients and the origin of heavy elements. However, modeling these stages presents major challenges due to computational limitations and theoretical uncertainties. In this talk, I will present a nuclear neural-network framework that emulates detailed nucleosynthesis after core oxygen depletion, opening a path toward efficient, high-fidelity supernova progenitor models and, ultimately, toward a better understanding of the explosion mechanism and compact-object formation. These remnants then become the starting point for the subsequent evolution of massive binaries. I will show how circumbinary disks formed after common-envelope evolution can alter double-neutron-star merger rates and properties probed by LVK by driving the neutron stars to merge prematurely with the stripped cores of their companions, before a second compact object can form. Such mergers can power luminous fast blue optical transients and provide an additional site for r-process nucleosynthesis, with implications for the heavy-element enrichment of the Milky Way.