TSI Seminar Series

Wen-fai Fong (Northwestern University)

Jan 27, 2026 3:30 PM

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Location: Bell Room (Rutherford 103)
TSI Seminar

As demonstrated by the historic discovery and follow-up campaigns of the first neutron star merger, GW170817, observations coupling gravitational waves and light hold the promise of precise localizations, thus enabling the determination of redshifts, the nature of their outflows, and properties of the environment on sub-parsec to kiloparsec scales. While we await the next counterpart to a gravitational wave-detected neutron star merger, new events are being discovered every month in the form of short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here, I will describe lessons learned from the large population of short GRB observations and their host galaxies. I aim to highlight what we can say about their rates, kilonovae properties, and contribution to the universe's r-process budget. I will also highlight the surprising discoveries of long-duration GRBs which also spawn from neutron star mergers, upending a long-held paradigm.