Speaker
Prof.
Liang Dai
(University of California, Berkeley)
Description
Thanks to extreme gravitational lensing magnification factors realized near the lensing caustics cast by galaxy cluster lenses, the most massive and short-lived stars in the Universe can be individually observed at cosmological distances. In this talk, I will demystify the phenomenology of these highly magnified stars, in particular the effect of intracluster microlensing. Additionally, I will explain how observing those can advance our knowledge of massive stars, and how this phenomenon can be exploited as an exquisite probe of dark matter mini-structures on sub-galactic scales. I will summarize recent observational progress in this area of study, and provide a future outlook.
Primary author
Prof.
Liang Dai
(University of California, Berkeley)
