Dartmouth Events

Abstract:  With the discovery of dozens of merging black holes and neutron stars by gravitational wave observatories over the past five years, the study of the complexities of binary stellar evolution - including mass transfer, tides, and r-process nucleosynthesis - has taken on a new urgency. In this talk, I will describe the current status of modeling binary star populations as well as several critical shortcomings that my collaborators and I are working to systematically address. In particular, I will focus on how we are using modern statistical and machine learning methods using dedicated supercomputers to improve our physical models of binary star populations.