Research summary
Astronomers know that massive stars played a crucial role in shaping our universe. These distant stars give birth to black holes and neutron stars while stoking the dynamical and chemical evolution of the universe. But massive stars still hold many mysteries. As Canada Research Chair in Time-Domain and Multimessenger Astrophysics, Dr. Maria Drout is trying to fill this knowledge gap.
Drout and her research team are trying to answer key questions about the evolution and death of massive stars, the origin of unusual astronomical transients, and the physics of stellar explosions. They are also using the next generation of wide-field time domain surveys to determine the nature of newly discovered varieties of stellar explosions and developing new techniques to identify and characterize evolved massive stars in elusive phases. In doing so, they aim to advance the burgeoning field of multimessenger gravitational-wave astrophysics.