ABSTRACT

I will discuss the theoretical models of various electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) sources due to NS-NS, NS-BH, and BH-BH mergers, which include a short gamma-ray burst and afterglow, a kilonova/mergernova and afterglow, a plausible long-duration X-ray event, and a speculative fast radio burst. Finally, I will report the observational data of the first GW event with the detections of EM counterparts and the theoretical implications from these observations.

BIO

Prof. Zhang is a theoretical astrophysicist. His research focuses on understanding the underlying physics of the high energy universe, including systems containing black holes of  different scales and neutron stars of different species, relativistic jets launched from these systems as well as their interaction with the ambient medium. Most of his research papers are dedicated to understanding gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most luminous explosions in the universe, but his publications also cover a wide range of topics in astrophysics, including gamma-ray and radio pulsars, magnetars, active galactic nuclei, tidal disruption events, white dwarfs, neutrinos and cosmic ray physics, dark matter, strange quark stars, planetary collisions, etc. Besides GRBs, his recent research also focuses are fast radio bursts and electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves. Prof. Zhang has published more than 300 papers in refereed journals with more than 19000 citations. He is a Changjiang visiting chair professor at Peking University since 2012, and a fellow of American Physics Society since 2014.