Μάθημα : Ενημέρωση φοιτητών κατεύθυνσης Αστροφυσικής

Speaker: Dr. Ioannis Contopoulos (Academy of Athens, Greece)

Title:  "Pulsars with PINNs" 

Abstract: Pulsars, the spinning remnants of massive stars, act as cosmic lighthouses, emitting beams of radiation that reveal the extreme physics of neutron stars. Yet, our understanding of pulsar radiation and variability remains incomplete. A reference ideal force-free magnetospheric solution for an oblique rotator is still lacking, and the most recent global Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations have raised several questions whose physical origin we do not understand.  In our talk, we will present our efforts to obtain the reference ideal force-free magnetospheric solution with an independent novel numerical method, namely Physics Inspired Neural Networks (PINNs). We will present our first results on the morphology of the magnetosphere, on the reconnection along the equatorial current sheet, and on the emitted high-energy radiation. We will show where and why our results differ from the state-of-the-art global PIC solutions, and we will discuss the potential of PINNs for astrophysics.