ABSTRACT

The launch of the Fermi mission has enabled critical improvements in the field of magnetars, neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields, in particular with the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), which is a all-sky high-energy transient detector (8 keV - 40 MeV). In the last seven years, the instrument has detected emission from 8 sources, and has co-discovered another two in synergy with the Swift mission. I will present selected highlights of magnetar results, including burst and persistent emission properties (spectral and temporal) per source as well as comparisons across sources.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Chryssa Kouveliotou's primary research interests have been in gamma- and X-ray astronomy. She has been working on gamma-ray bursts since her Ph.D. thesis in 1978; current research projects include ground-based follow-up observations of GRBs, X-ray studies of X-ray binaries and soft gamma repeaters (SGRs), and variability studies of accreting black holes. In 1998 she established the connection of SGRs with young neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields (magnetars). Dr. Kouveliotou has been the principal investigator of numerous research projects in the U.S. and in Europe, and is a founding member of multiple scientific collaborations worldwide. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a recipient of the 2003 Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the 2002 Descartes Prize of the European Union, the NASA Space Act Award (2005), the Heineman Prize (2012), the NASA Exceptional Service Medal (2012), the Greek Government Order of the Phoenix, Commander class for excellence in science (2015). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Dutch Academy. She has served on a number of committees, including the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Academy of Sciences (2003-2006), the Astrophysics Subcommittee of the NAC (2012-2015), and the Space Studies Board of the NAS (2015-); she has been elected Chair of the Division of Astrophysics of the APS (2003), Chair of the HEAD (2008), Councilor of the AAS (2007), and Vice President of the AAS (2013 -). She has served in over 20 Ph.D. committees worldwide. She has 440 refereed publications (36 in Nature and 7 in Science) with a Hirsh-index = 81, and co-edited 3 books. She is one of the 249 most-cited space science researchers worldwide with a total of 31,427 citations (for refereed and non-refereed publications). In 2013 Dr. Kouveliotou chaired a task force on the strategic planning of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate/Astrophysics Division. Their report “Enduring Quests - Daring Visions can be found at (http://go.nasa.gov/1gGVkZY).