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The last few years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of cataclysmic variable stars. As a result, we are finally developing a much clearer picture of their evolution as binary systems, the physics of the accretion processes…
Our current knowledge of neutron star formation, progenitors, and natal masses, spins, magnetic fields, and space velocities is briefly reviewed from a theorist's perspective. More observational information is badly needed to constrain…
The gamma ray burst phenomenon is reviewed from a theoretical point of view, with emphasis on the fireball shock scenario of the prompt emission and the longer wavelenght afterglow. Recent progress and issues are discussed, including…
The modelling of massive star evolution is a complex task, and is very sensitive to the way physical processes (such as convection, rotation, mass loss, etc.) are included in stellar evolution code. Moreover, the very high observed fraction…
In recent years, several analytic models have demonstrated that simple assumptions about halo growth and feedback-regulated star formation can match the (limited) existing observational data on galaxies at z>6. By extending such models, we…
Thanks to their usefulness in various fields of astrophysics (e.g. mixing processes in stars, chemical evolution of galaxies), the last few years have witnessed a large increase in the amount of abundance data for early-type stars. Two…
More than a decade after their discovery, astronomical Fast Radio Bursts remain enigmatic. They are known to occur at "cosmological" distances, implying large energy and radiated power, extraordinarily high brightness and coherent emission.…
The characterization of the growing number of newly discovered exoplanets ---nature, internal structure, formation and evolution--- strongly relies on the properties of their host-star, i.e. its mass, radius and age. These latter can be…
Core-collapse theory brings together many facets of high-energy and nuclear astrophysics and the numerical arts to present theorists with one of the most important, yet frustrating, astronomical questions: "What is the mechanism of…
Most young stars in nearby molecular clouds have estimated ages of 1-2 Myr, suggesting that star formation is rapid. However, small numbers of stars in these regions with inferred ages of >= 5-10 Myr have been cited to argue that star…
A solid observational characterization of cluster regions around the virial radius would allow us to improve considerably our understanding of the physics of galaxy clusters as a whole: sadly current and planned experiments will not allow…
Several recent studies of Solar twins in the Solar neighbourhood have shown a tight correlation between various elemental abundances and age, in particular [Y/Mg]. If this relation is real and valid for other types of stars as well as…
The determination of the age of the bulge has led to two contradictory results. On the one side, the color-magnitude diagrams in different bulge fields seem to indicate a uniformly old ($>$10 Gyr) population. On the other side, individual…
All fundamental physical principles are confirmed by numerous experiments and practical certainty and have unambiguous interpretation. But physics of stars is based on few measured effects only. It gives some freedom for figments of the…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Gamma-ray bursts are a complex, non-linear system that evolves very rapidly through stages of vastly different conditions. They evolve from scales of few hundred kilometers where they are very dense and hot to cold and tenuous on scales of…
Eclipses and pulsations are the two primary ways in which the physical properties of stars can be deduced and used to improve our understanding of stellar theory. An obvious idea is to combine these two analyses into the study of pulsating…
Stellar models provide a vital basis for many aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. Recent advances in observational astronomy -- through asteroseismology, precision photometry, high-resolution spectroscopy, and large-scale surveys -- are…
There are many competing theories and models describing the formation, migration and evolution of exoplanet systems. As both the precision with which we can characterize exoplanets and their host stars, and the number of systems for which…
The timescale over which planets may form in the circumstellar disks of young stars is one of the main issues of current planetary formation models. We present here new constraints on planet formation timescales derived from the rotational…