Presentation

The workshop "Neutron stars and their environments" (MODE-SNR-PWN) brings together several communities interested in the physics of neutron stars and their environmnents: theoreticians and observers of neutron stars, supernova remnants (SNRs), and pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). 

Scientific summary

Neutron stars and their environments are extremely complex astrophysical sources. Therefore, multi-wavelength and multi-messenger observations, together with macroscopic and microscopic modelling of these sources, are essential to understand the underlying physical mechanisms.

Over the last decade an enormous amount of new information about neutron stars, pulsars and their wind nebulae, and supernova remnants, has been accumulated by different radiotelescopes, by satellites like XMM-Newton, Chandra, Suzaku, RXTE, INTEGRAL and Fermi, and by ground-based instruments in the very high energy gamma-ray domain like HESS and VERITAS.

Moreover, new very interesting information from gravitational wave detectors like VIRGO and LIGO has begun to shed light on compact stars, and is expected to develop greatly in the near future.  Various new phenomena related for instance to the enormous magnetic fields (flares and QPOs), to the reheating of the crust or to particle acceleration in PWNe and in SNRs have been observed.  Recent very-high-energy gamma-ray observations shed light on PWNe as sources of cosmic-ray positrons and electrons, improving our understanding of the origin and propagation of Galactic cosmic rays.  A thorough understanding of all these phenomena requires to bring together researchers from the different fields. Important issues to address include: What can we learn from these new observations about neutron-star structure and composition, and the radiation mechanism? Which models shall be developed to analyse the new data? What would be key observations for the future?

Meeting program

The workshop will help the different communities exchange ideas as well as discuss internal advanced issues. To that end, the program will be organised in plenary sessions with reviews, parallel specialised sessions, and a round table to help the discussion between the communities. All sessions will be held at the University of Law at Montpellier (France). The sessions will be arranged in such a way to create "focus sessions" around certain topics, among them:

• Radio timing,
• Rotating neutron stars,
• General relativity and neutron-star modelling,
• Equation of state and nuclear processes,
• Observation at different wavelengths,
• Emission processes,
• Pulsar magnetospheres,
• Supernovae, Supernova remnants, Pulsar wind nebulae.

A main focus of this year's edition is the role of multi-messenger observations in the understanding of neutron stars, pulsars and their nebulae, and SNRs, including in particular gravitational wave and cosmic-ray observations.Keynote speakers will highlight recent developments in these subfields.

Preliminary list of invited speakers

• M. Bejger
• G. Dubner
• E. Giacani
• B. Giacomazzo
• F. Vincent

Meeting place and dates

The workshop will take place from Monday, June 11 to Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at the University of Law of Montpellier, France. 

The registration deadline is May 28, 2018.
The deadline for financial support request is May 28, 2018 (notification for the support: May 30).

Scientific Organizing committee