Summer Program
Sources of Hard Ionizing Radiation in Starburst Galaxies
August 29–September 19, 2027
Organizers:
Bret Lehmer, University of Arkansas
Ilya Mandel, Monash University
Lidia Oskinova, University of Potsdam
Daniel Schaerer, University of Geneva
Why do so many star-forming galaxies show evidence of ions with high ionisation potential, indicating the presence of hard radiation? The nature of the sources of this hard radiation remain unclear, yet they hold the key to understanding underlying physical processes such as accretion onto black holes, shocks, efficient mixing in massive stars, star formation, stellar winds, interactions between pairs of companion stars, and supernovae. We invite theorists, computational modellers, and observers across stellar, extragalactic, X-ray, and the high-redshift astrophysics to discuss solutions to this acute problem.
Summer Workshops
The summer program, running for 16 weeks from late-May to mid-September, emphasizes exciting open problems at the cutting edge. Two or three concurrent workshops, each with a specific focus selected for timeliness and the potential for breakthroughs and of two to five weeks in length, establish the main themes of each week, with twelve or thirteen different workshops each summer, balanced across fields including particle physics, string theory, astrophysics and hard and soft condensed matter physics, as well as emerging areas including biological physics, ultra-cold atom physics, quantum information, and physical mathematics. Additional researchers participate in small working groups or as individual researchers. This framework is designed to maximize informal interactions and free discussion within each area and to promote cross-fertilization between different areas via the common language of theoretical physics. Participation in the summer program of the Aspen Center for Physics is by application and subsequent invitation only. View past workshops.
