ZOOM-only Ordinary Meeting with Anwesha Sahu

Guest Speaker: Anwesha Sahu, University of Warwick

Anwesha will be presenting on ZOOM. This will be a ZOOM-only meeting.

Title: White dwarfs/transients and Radio Emissions

Abstract: Pulsars and white dwarfs as individual classes of astronomical objects are well studied. With their characteristic radio pulses emitted from a neutron star, pulsars are remnants of turbulent supernova explosions. On the contrary, white dwarf stars form in calmer scenarios – as a red giant star sheds its layers in a planetary nebula, leaving behind the core in the form of a white dwarf star. Novel white dwarf pulsars are a little bit of both. The first of its kind, AR Sco, was discovered by researchers at Warwick in 2016 and its characteristics were baffling. White dwarf pulsars are binary white dwarf systems which show pulsed emissions correlated to the spin period of the system. They show intriguing signatures across the electromagnetic spectrum. Are magnetic interactions between the two stars in the system at play? Is it accretion? Are these systems related to neutron stars? I will address these questions and shed more light on these curious systems in this talk.

Biography: I am a PhD researcher at the University of Warwick, working on accretion and outflows in extreme astrophysical environments. I completed my BSc and MSci at the University of Birmingham in 2023, with my MSci dissertation on machine learning techniques for radio astronomy. During my time in Birmingham, I was chair and outreach officer for AstroSoc. Outside research, I can often be found working on science outreach projects, my favourite one being Orbyts: https://www.orbyts.org/. If I’m not talking about astronomy, you will probably find me word-vomiting about my guinea pigs with unsuspecting people, or writing. You can read more about my research here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/astro/people/anweshasahu/

Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/96515069971?pwd=YTJMWlBPbDdOR09XUnNVYnFTdDN4UT09