Prof. J. Christopher Clemens
Jaroslav Folda Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of North Carolina
White Dwarfs are compact, electron degenerate stellar remnants that cool slowly in the dark of space until we can't see them. How can they possibly be interesting enough to warrant a 45 minute lecture? In answer to this question, I will present two gripping stories. The first concerns the history of exoplanet composition in the Galaxy, which seems an impossible thing to know without interstellar travel. Yet the white dwarfs provide a way, even for the cosmologically significant element lithium, as my research team has shown. The second story is a mystery; a hitherto untold and not yet fully-resolved tale about magnetic white dwarfs that appear to cool too fast. Do their strong magnetic fields alter the interior physics, either reducing the heat capacity, or enhancing the emission of some weakly interacting particle? We don't know, but our next research project is aimed at sorting this out. There will be a short interlude between the stories in which I will show off a novel (and patented) spectrograph design that delivers aberration and distortion free spectra over a large field by employing a spherically curved volume phase holographic transmission grating (made of cow gelatin) in conjunction with a spherical mirror.
Hosted by Prof. Crepp