Cosmic-ray acceleration - limits and laboratories I will review the current theoretical status of shock acceleration at supernova type shocks, with an emphasis on the plasma theory and implications for limitation on maximum energy. The current hypotheses will be put to the test in a surprising scaled down laboratory, the...
The Crab nebula and pulsar - particle acceleration at the limit The Crab Nebula is the front-page object of multi-wavelength astrophysics and an excellent object to study non-thermal emission and particle acceleration. The Crab Pulsar powers the extreme accelerator regions that inject an ultra-relativistic plasma into the surrounding nebula. The...
Up to two billion times acceleration of scientific simulations with deep neural architecture search Computer simulations are invaluable tools for scientific discovery. However, accurate simulations are often slow to execute, which limits their applicability to extensive parameter exploration, large-scale data analysis, and uncertainty quantification. A promising route to accelerate simulations...
Identifying sources of high-energy neutrinos of the AGN type: A theoretical approach Active galactic nuclei (AGN) have long been predicted to emit neutrinos if they host sites of cosmic-ray acceleration to very high energies. Until a few years ago neutrino astrophysics was merely a prediction by (some) cosmic-ray theorists. It...
LISA – Bringing the Gravitational Wave Revolution to Space Gravitational Wave (GW) observatories are humanity’s newest tool for studying the universe. After decades of development efforts, terrestrial interferometers such as LIGO and Virgo are now routinely detecting ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by distant astrophysical cataclysms such as...
Infrared Interferometry of the Galactic Center Black Hole The Galactic Center harbors the nearest massive black hole. With a distance of only 8 kpc, it is the closest laboratory to study the astrophysical processes at work in these extreme objects, and to probe Einstein's general theory of relativity in the...
TeV Halos and their connection to the local Leptonic Cosmic Ray flux The origin and propagation of cosmic rays (CRs) is one of the most important questions in astroparticle physics nowadays. CRs generated by known sources also serve as background to those putatively generated by more exotic phenomena. Apart from...
Coherent neutrino scattering: from experimental challenges to new frontiers in neutrino physics The detection of coherent-neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS) opens a new window to study the fundamental properties of neutrinos and to probe physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Given the very low recoil energies (eV - keV)...
Stellar Forensics with the Most Powerful Explosions in the Universe Core-collapse Supernovae (SNe), Long-duration Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and exotic transients are exploding massive stars and constitute the most powerful explosions in the universe. Because they are visible over large cosmological distances, release elements heavier than Helium, and leave behind extreme...
Gravitational waves in a new light Ultra-precisely stabilised lasers are the interferometric light sources at the heart of gravitational wave detectors. To achieve ever-higher detection rates for meaningful gravitational wave astronomy, ever-greater detection sensitivity is required. In this talk, I will introduce the principle of interferometric gravitational wave detection, and...
Recent results from IceCube and the future of neutrino astronomy at the South Pole The IceCube neutrino observatory at the geographic South Pole has now been operating at full capacity for ten years. Following the first observation of astrophysical neutrinos in the TeV -- PeV energy range in 2013, cosmic...
Origin of UHECR: current status of a decades-long open question Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) are the most energetic known particles of the Universe, being accelerated to energies up to 7 orders of magnitude higher than those achieved in human-made accelerators. Their origins, however, remain an intriguing puzzle even decades after...