Speaker:
Bennett Link, MSU Physics

Title:
"Neutrino Pulsars"

Abstract:
Neutron stars are efficient accelerators for bringing charges up to relativistic energies. As charges move in the star's strong magnetic field they produce beamed radiation, and the star can be observed as a "pulsar" (usually in radio waves) if the rotating beam sweeps the Earth. There are now over 1500 known pulsars. I will describe how neutron stars might also produce beamed neutrinos at very high energies, about 50 TeV (5x1013 eV!). The beam intensity could be much stronger than any other astrophysical neutrino source, and so a "neutrino pulsar" could represent the breakthrough discovery currently being sought in high-energy neutrino astronomy.

Host:
Charles Kankelbor