Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

Core-collapse supernovae are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe. They signal the birth of neutron stars and, perhaps, stellar-mass black holes and they may be intimately related to cosmological gamma ray bursts. In addition, supernovae may be the astrophysical seat for the production of nearly half the elements more massive than iron: the r-process nuclides. Despite the importance of such events, a theory of core-collapse supernovae remains elusive. In this talk I will review our understanding of the supernova mechanism, the essential neutrino physics, and the collapse signature in modern terrestrial neutrino detectors. I will further discuss the early evolution of the newly born (proto-)neutron star and the physics of the neutrino-driven wind that attends the 10-20 second Kelvin-Helmholtz cooling epoch. In particular, I will assess the potential of this outflow as the site in nature for the production of the r-process nuclides.

Dr. Allen Hartford is the Program Director of the Science and Technology Base Program Office, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) organization that oversees the undergraduate student program, the graduate research program and the postdoctoral program. In addition he is responsible for managing the Laboratory’s discretionary research fund (Laboratory Directed Research and Development) and for overseeing the yearly review of all Laboratory technical divisions as part of the University of California oversight process. Dr. Hartford will briefly describe the exciting research and development underway at LANL in applied physics, biosciences, chemistry, computational sciences, earth and environmental sciences, engineering, material sciences, space sciences and theoretical physics. He will also describe employment possibilities and the opportunities for exciting careers at LANL.