Colloquium – Duncan Lorimer

Duncan Lorimer, West Virginia University

Making Sense of the Census — The Cosmological Population of Fast Radio Bursts

Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond-duration pulses of unknown origin that were discovered by an undergraduate student at West Virginia University in 2007. They share a number of similarities with gamma-ray bursts which we now understand as being due to multiple populations. In this talk, I will review our attempts to understand their population and review the current evidence in favor of multiple source populations and how they might connect to gamma-ray bursts and gravitational wave sources. I also review some of the implications for these discoveries on our understanding the Galactic population of neutron stars which brings us back full circle to the FRB discovery.

Feb 23, 2023 @ 4:00pm Central in Stevenson 4327; reception beforehand at 3:30pm in Stevenson 6333

Host: S. Hutson

To join via Zoom, please contact Reina Beach (reina.beach@vanderbilt.edu) to request the Zoom link.

Originally graduating from Cardiff University with a BSc in Astrophysics in 1990, Duncan Lorimer was inspired to study neutron stars by his undergraduate mentor, Prof. Bernard Schutz. Lorimer got his PhD. in 1994 for his contributions to Pulsar Astronomy from the University of Manchester in the UK under the supervision of Profs. Andrew Lyne, Dick Manchester and Matthew Bailes. Since then he has held positions at the University of Manchester (Lecturer; 1994-5); the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (Postdoctoral Fellow; 1995-8); Cornell University (Postdoctoral Fellow; 1998-2001); University of Manchester (Royal Society Research Fellow; 2001-6) and West Virginia University (Faculty; 2006-present). While at WVU, Prof. Lorimer has served as Associate and Interim Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Along with his wife and fellow astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin, Lorimer has helped establish the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology at WVU. Prof. Lorimer’s scholarly achievements have been recognized on several occasions: a Cottrell Scholar Award (2008) from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and both the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and WVU’s recognition for excellence in teaching (2009, 2010) as well as the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award in the Physical Sciences (2019). Among his notable research achievements are his many contributions to our understanding of the population of pulsars and the discovery of Fast Radio Bursts. Since 1994 Prof. Lorimer has been a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Since January 2019 Prof. Lorimer has served the Eberly College of Arts and Science at WVU in the capacity of Associate Dean for Research. He also currently serves as interim Department Chair of Physics and Astronomy at WVU.