Lars Bildsten

Lars Bildsten (* 1964 ) is an American astrophysicist .

Bildsten graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in physics and received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1991 . As a post-doctoral student , he spent three years at Caltech (as a Lee A. DuBridge Research Fellow in theoretical astrophysics) before becoming an assistant professor and later an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1999 he became a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara . In 2010 he became Wayne Rosing, Simon and Diana Raab Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics. In 2012 he succeeded David Gross as director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), of which he has been a permanent member since 1999.

He is an external member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Cosmology and Gravity Program. He was a visiting professor (Beatrice Tinsley Centennial Visiting Professor) at the University of Texas at Austin.

He is concerned with astrophysics of star structure and the evolution of stars in all areas of their life cycle, especially in phases of rapid changes (such as star oscillations) and at the end of their life cycle. He works closely with observing astronomers. In recent times he has been particularly concerned with white dwarfs (their accretion and reaction to thermonuclear ignitions inside or on their surface) and their possible explosion as a Type Ia supernova . He predicted a new type of supernovae in 2007, the observation of which was confirmed in 2009. This type .Ia supernova (a subtype of the type Ia supernovae) occurs in binary star systems of white dwarfs when helium falls from one partner to the other, which leads to unstable ignition of the helium burner .

In addition, he deals in general with optical transients (objects with brightness fluctuations on relatively short astronomical time scales from seconds to years) and he also dealt with the possibility of observing neutron stars as binary star systems and their fusion via gravitational waves at LIGO .

In 1995 he was a Sloan Research Fellow . In 2000 he gave the Edwin Salpeter Lecture at Cornell University and in 2004 the Biermann Lecture at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and Jesse Greenstein Lecturer at Caltech. In 1999 he received the Helen B. Warner Prize ( for fundamental work on star structure including nuclear reactions inside neutron stars, the role of neutron stars as sources of gravitational waves and the theory of lithium degradation in nuclear processes inside stars ), and 2017 the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics ( for his leadership role and in observations of well-founded theoretical modeling, which led to fundamental insights into the physics of star structure and evolution, into compact astrophysical objects and star explosions ). In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2018 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Web links

• Biography at the Kavli Institute

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New Type of Supernova Explosion Detected Was Predicted by KITP Theoretical Physicists, KITP 2009 . Analysis of observations from 2002 by Dovi Poznanski (Berkeley) and colleagues.
2. ↑ Lars Bildsten, Ken Shen, Nevin Weinberg, Gijs Nelemans: Faint Thermonuclear Supernovae from AM Canum Venaticorum Binaries, Astroph. J. Lett., Volume 662, 2007, No. 2, L 95, Arxiv 2007
3. ↑ Ken Shen, Dan Kasen, Nevin Weinberg, Lars Bildsten, Evan Scannapieco, Thermonuclear, IA supernovae from Helium shell detonations: explosion models and observables, Astroph. Journal, Volume 715, 2010, No. 2, p. 767, Arxiv 2010
4. ↑ Laudation, for his fundamental work on stellar structure, including nuclear burning on neutron stars, the role of neutron stars as gravity wave sources, and the theory of lithium depletion
5. ↑ Laudation: for his leadership and observationally grounded theoretical modeling that has yielded fundamental insights into the physics of stellar structure and evolution, compact objects, and stellar explosions . Heinemann Prize 2017
6. ^ Fellows of the AAAS: Lars Bildsten. (No longer available online.) American Association for the Advancement of Science, archived from the original on February 11, 2018 ; accessed on February 11, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.