Extremely energetic stellar explosions such as hypernovae and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most violent events in the Universe since the Big Bang. They play a crucial role in enriching their environment with newly formed heavy elements and allow us to probe the Universe on cosmological scales. Their importance has been recently showcased by the launch of the SVOM mission, which will provide us with an unprecedented view of the high-energy transient deep sky. In the last two decades there has been also a tremendous improvement in our ability to quantitatively model the different stages of these explosive events (e.g. the collapse of massive rotating stars, the merger of compact binary neutron stars, the propagation of the relativistic jet, the observed multi-wavelength and multi-messenger emission). However, there are still fundamental questions (such as the mechanism responsible for GRBs prompt emission or the nature of the compact object in the explosion's central engine) that remain unanswered to this day. One of the main challenges that needs to be overcome is the extreme scale separation between the different stages of the event, which often require tailored numerical tools, underlying assumptions, or limited numerical resolutions.

This special session aims at bringing together experts in the modeling of all the different phases that characterize extreme stellar explosions, from their initial onset to the emission of the electromagnetic transient. The main goal is to foster discussions and collaborations that will help the community to develop a deeper understanding of the fundamental physical processes at work during these events and trace the path to connect observed GRBs to their stellar progenitors.

Programme

This special session will focus on three major topics related to the modeling of extreme stellar explosions:

Invited speakers

Scientific organisers

Contact

matteo.bugli @ iap.fr