Speaker: Sanjay Reddy (University of Washington)

Title: Neutron Stars as Laboratories for Nuclear and Particle Physics

Abstract: Almost 60 years after their discovery, radio,  x-ray, and gravitational wave observations of neutron stars are beginning to provide valuable constraints on the structure and composition of neutron stars. I will discuss recent efforts to interpret these observations using advances in nuclear theory and modeling. These studies provide new insights about the sound speed in dense matter and low-temperature properties such as its specific heat. Neutron stars can also be excellent sites to look for dark matter. The second part of my talk will discuss how to harness neutron star observations to constrain or discover dark matter candidates with sub-GeV masses.  

Bio: Sanjay Reddy is a professor of physics at the University of Washington and a senior fellow at the National Institute for Nuclear Theory at UW. He obtained his PhD from Stony Brook University in 1998. He spent a few years as a postdoc at MIT and the Institute for Nuclear theory (INT) in Seattle, Wa. He became a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Lab 2002 and remained there till 2011, the year he accepted a senior fellow position at the INT. He has been an APS fellow since 2009. His research interest includes nuclear and neutrino astrophysics, extreme astrophysical phenomena in neutron stars and supernova, x-ray bursts, magnetar flares, and gamma-ray bursts). Other interests include the application of quantum​ many-body theory to nuclei, cold atom gases, nuclear matter, dense quark matter, and related phases in neutron stars.