Events in Physics
Exotic stellar populations in Globular Clusters
Andrea Dieball (University of Southampton)
"FUV surveys of globular clusters: Exotic stellar populations"
Abstract:
Globular clusters are old stellar systems with high stellar densities especially in the clusters' core. In such a dense environment, dynamical interactions between the cluster stars are inevitable, leading to a variety of exotic stellar populations like blue stragglers, cataclysmic variables (CVs), low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), and possibly binary horizontal-branch stars. Far-UV observations are an ideal tool to detect and study such stellar species, because they show a spectral energy distribution that is bluer than that of "ordinary" cluster members and emit radiation in the far-UV. As a result, crowding is considerably reduced in the far-UV.
In the first part of my talk, I will concentrated on CVs and LMXBs and present a few highlights of our FUV surveys on Globular clusters. In the second part, I will talk about Blue Hook stars, which are a rare population of the most extreme horizontal-branch stars.