PROGENITOR · PRObes of Gravitational-wave progENITORs
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2023-09-30
- EU contribution
- €175,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
PRObes of Gravitational-wave progENITORs
Massive stars - stars born with masses exceeding eight times that of our Sun - are related to a plethora of phenomena in modern astronomy, such as transients and core-collapse supernovae, the Early Universe, and gravitational-wave astrophysics. PROGENITOR had the overarching goal of advancing our understanding of massive stars by analysing observations of selected samples of massive stars in our Galaxy and a nearby galaxy called the "Large Magellanic Cloud". Specifically, the research had four main fundamental objectives: - RO1: Establish whether the most massive stars known are in binary or multiple stellar systems - RO2: Substantiate the evolutionary pathway of merging pairs of black holes, as observed by gravitational-wave facilities. - RO3: Establish the multiplicity of black-hole progenitors in the Local Group - RO4: Boost our theories of massive-star evolution
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Stars initially ten times more massive than our Sun play a vital role in the evolution of the Cosmos. Their death is marked by the sudden collapse of their cores into neutron stars or black holes. Somehow, tight couples of massive black holes in the distant Universe occasionally merge, unleashing powerful gravitational waves that are now regularly being measured. The underlying processes that lead to the formation of these pairs remain shrouded in mystery, entailing an intricate story about the life cycle of their PROGENITORs -- the most massive and evolved stars. This reminded the astrophysical community of huge gaps in our knowledge of key processes governing massive-star evolution, related to binary interactions, mass-loss, and mixing. To mitigate this, we must obtain robust empirical constraints on the multiplicity, configuration, and stellar properties of the direct progenitors of black holes in regions that approach the conditions of the distant Universe: the Wolf-Rayet populations of the Magellanic Clouds. The MSCA fellowship offers an ideal platform for achieving this, relying on my unique skills, data, and tools in massive-star spectroscopy with training in state-of-the-art evolution models of stellar populations that I will receive at the University of Amsterdam. I will exploit brand new multi-epoch, multiwavelength monitoring spectroscopy obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Very Large Telescope (VLT). I will establish the physical and orbital properties of entire populations of Wolf-Rayet stars and binaries in the Magellanic Clouds relying on state-off-the-art tools and novel analysis techniques. I will compute population-synthesis models to constrain the evolutionary paths of gravitational-wave mergers. Through this, I will push our understanding of massive stars and gravitational wave sources throughout the Cosmos to new frontiers.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union