Accreting Neutron Stars and Black Holes in our Galaxy through the Lens of Roman

Over the past decade, our understanding of the population and behavior of compact objects has shifted significantly, thanks to a multitude of novel facilities, from gravitational wave observatories, astrometry missions like Gaia, and sensitive radio facilities such as MeerKAT. While some of our earlier questions about black holes and neutron stars may have been answered, many newer ones have arised. In the next frontier, facilities like Roman are the vital catalysts revealing the mysteries of these objects and helping us better understand how black holes might be forming in our Galaxy (clues about supernovae and natal kicks from observations), how many black holes might be out there in our Galaxy (clues about formation mechanism and environment), and the extreme behaviour of matter around these object (mass-transfer, accretion and jets). In this talk, I briefly review some of the current questions and recent discoveries on the topic, and discuss the exciting opportunities that Roman can provide in helping us studying these systems further.

Speaker:  Arash Bahramian (Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy)

The Roman Lecture Series is a monthly virtual lecture series focused on the scientific capabilities and technology of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, organized by Roman mission partners.