Related papers: Astro2020: From Stars to Compact Objects: The Init…
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial…
Neutron stars are the densest, directly observable stellar objects in the universe and serve as unique astrophysical laboratories to study the behavior of matter under extreme physical conditions. This book chapter is devoted to describing…
I present a discussion of fundamental stellar parameters and their observational determination in the context of interferometric measurements with current and future optical/infrared interferometric facilities. Stellar parameters and the…
The understanding and modeling of the structure and evolution of stars is based on statistical physics as well as on hydrodynamics. Today, a precise identification and proper description of the physical processes at work in stellar…
The Initial Mass Function (IMF) for massive galaxies can be constrained by combining stellar dynamics with strong gravitational lensing. However, this method is limited by degeneracies between the density profile of dark matter and the…
Massive stars play a major role not only in stellar evolution but also galactic evolution theory. This is because of their dynamical interaction with binary companions, and because their strong winds and explosive deaths as supernovae…
Future space-based laser interferometry experiments such as LISA are expected to detect $\cal O$(100--1000) stellar-mass compact objects (e.g., black holes, neutron stars) falling into massive black holes in the centers of galaxies, the…
It is usually assumed that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) takes a universal form and that there exists a direct mapping between this and the distribution of natal core masses (the core mass function, CMF). The IMF and CMF have been…
Although fundamental for astrophysics, the processes that produce massive stars are not well understood. Large distances, high extinction, and short timescales of critical evolutionary phases make observations of these processes…
Accurate specification of a likelihood function is becoming increasingly difficult in many inference problems in astronomy. As sample sizes resulting from astronomical surveys continue to grow, deficiencies in the likelihood function lead…
The amount of mass loss is of fundamental importance to the lives and deaths of very massive stars, the input of chemical elements and momentum into the interstellar and intergalactic media, as well as the emitted ionizing radiation. I…
Gravitational microlensing constraints on non-standard compact objects are conventionally derived assuming lenses trace the dark matter halo with velocities following a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution centered around $10^{-3}c$. However, a…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of protostellar collapse is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. Observationally, there are two…
Close-orbit binaries consisting of two compact objects are a center of attention because of the detection of gravitational-radiation-induced mergers. The creation of close, compact-object binaries involves physical processes that are not…
Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars. It depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed. Consequently…
The study of compact object populations has come a long way since the determination of the mass of the Hulse-Taylor pulsar, and we now count on more than 150 known Galactic neutron stars and black hole masses, as well as another 180 objects…
This article presents recent work to constrain the physical and chemical properties in high-mass star formation based largely on interferometric high-spatial-resolution continuum and spectral line studies at (sub)mm wavelengths. After…
While the modern stellar IMF shows a rapid decline with increasing mass, theoretical investigations suggest that very massive stars (>100 solar masses) may have been abundant in the early universe. Other calculations also indicate that,…
The masses of stars including stellar remnants are almost exclusively known from binary systems. In this work, we study gravitational microlensing of faint background galaxies by isolated neutron stars (pulsars). We show that the resulting…
Models of the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium, galaxies, and the Universe rely on our understanding of the amounts and chemical composition of the material returned by stars and supernovae. Stellar yields are obtained from…