Related papers: Stars and Fundamental Physics
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
Probing the existence of hypothetical particles beyond the Standard model often deals with extreme parameters: large energies, tiny cross-sections, large time scales, etc. Sometimes laboratory experiments can test required regions of…
A new physical phenomenon is identified: volumetric stellar emission into gravitationally bound orbits of weakly coupled particles such as axions, moduli, hidden photons, and neutrinos. While only a tiny fraction of the instantaneous…
How stars are born from clouds of gas is a rich physics problem whose solution will inform our understanding of not just stars but also planets, galaxies, and the universe itself. Star formation is stupendously inefficient. Take the Milky…
We explore the unique and fascinating structure of neutron stars. Although neutron stars are of interest in many areas of Physics, our aim is to provide an intellectual bridge between Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. We argue against the…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
If axions exist, they are copiously produced in hot and dense plasmas, carrying away energy directly from the interior of stars. Various astronomical observables constrain the operation of such anomalous stellar energy-loss channels and…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
Neutron stars offer powerful astrophysical laboratories to probe the properties of dark matter. Gradual accumulation of heavy, non-annihilating dark matter in neutron stars can lead to the formation of comparable-mass black holes, and…
Black holes and neutron stars present extreme forms of matter that cannot be created as such in a laboratory on Earth. Instead, we have to observe and analyze the experiments that are ongoing in the Universe. The most telling observations…
A new line of research on Dark Stars is reviewed, which suggests that the first stars to exist in the universe were powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which may be there own…
Neutron stars involve extreme physics which is difficult (perhaps impossible) to explore in laboratory experiments. We have to turn to astrophysical observations, and try to extract information from the entire range of the electromagnetic…
Supernovae are the most powerful cosmic sources of MeV neutrinos. These elementary particles play a crucial role when the evolution of a massive star is terminated by the collapse of its core to a neutron star or a black hole and the star…
With central densities as high as 5-10 times the nuclear saturation density, neutron stars exhibit extreme conditions that cannot be observed elsewhere. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for probing the composition and properties of…
It is a current opinion that thermonuclear fusion is the main source of the star activity. It is shown below that this source is not unique. There is another electrostatic mechanism of the energy generation which accompanies thermonuclear…
The unknown state of matter at ultra-high density, large proton/neutron number asymmetry, and low temperature is a major long-standing problem in modern physics. Neutron stars provide the only known setting in the Universe where matter in…
Formed in the aftermath of gravitational core-collapse supernova explosions, neutron stars are unique cosmic laboratories for probing the properties of matter under extreme conditions that cannot be reproduced in terrestrial laboratories.…
Strong interaction physics under extreme conditions of high temperature and/or density is of central interest in modern nuclear physics for experimentalists and theorists alike. In order to investigate such systems, model approaches that…
This paper reviews the physics of stars, the type, structure, evolution and stability. Simple thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are used to show the inner working of white dwarf and neutron stars. The major concentration of the paper…
A forefront area of research concerns the exploration of the properties of hadronic matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density, and the determination of the equation of state--the relation between pressure, temperature and…