Presentation

The workshop "Neutron stars and their environments" (MODE-SNR-PWN) shall bring together the three communities interested in the physics of neutron stars and their environments: neutron-star, supernova remnant (SNR), and pulsar wind nebula (PWN) observers and theoreticians. The workshop is supported by the PNHE, GANIL, CEA and the greater Caen Council Caen la mer.

The workshop MODE-SNR-PWN will also host a working group 2 (WG2) meeting of the COST Action NewCompStar. This event is supported by COST / NewCompStar. 

Scientific summary

Neutron stars and their environments are extremely complex astrophysical sources. Therefore, multi-wavelength/multi-messenger observations, together with macroscopic and microscopic modelling of these sources, are essential to understand the underlying physical mechanisms.

Over the last decade an enormous amount of new information about neutron stars, pulsars and their wind nebulae, and supernova remnants, has been accumulated by different radiotelescopes, satellites like XMM-NEWTON, CHANDRA, Suzaku, RXTE, INTEGRAL, FERMI, and by instruments in the very high energy gamma-ray domain like HESS and VERITAS.

Moreover, new very interesting information is expected to shed light on compact stars in the near future thanks to the gravitational-wave detectors like VIRGO and LIGO. Various new phenomena related for instance to the enormous magnetic fields (Flares and QPO), to the reheating of the crust or to particle acceleration in PWNe and in SNRs have been observed. A thorough understanding of all these phenomena requires to bring together researchers from the different fields. Important issues to address include: What can we learn from these new observations about neutron-star structure and composition, and the radiation mechanism? Which models shall be developed to analyse the new data? What would be key observations for the future?

Meeting program

The workshop shall help the three communities to exchange ideas as well as discussing internal advanced issues. To that end, the program will be organised in plenary sessions with reviews, parallel specialised sessions, and a round table to help the discussion among the communities. All sessions will be held at Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds (GANIL), in Caen (France). The sessions will be arranged in such a way to create "focus sessions" around certain topics, among them:

• Radio timing,
• Rotating neutron stars,
• General relativity and neutron-star modelling,
• Equation of state and nuclear processes,
• Observation at different wavelengths,
• Emission processes,
• Pulsar magnetospheres,
• Supernovae, Supernova remnants, Pulsar wind nebulae.

This year’s edition is devoted to  the interplay between astrophysical observations and microphysics inputs for the description of pulsars, neutron stars, SNRs/PWNe. Keynote speakers will highlight recent developments in these subfields. Confirmed speakers to date are: Morgane Fortin (CAMK, Warsaw, Poland), Francesca Gulminelli (LPC Caen, France), Carlos Palenzuela (University of Balearic Islands, Spain), Gerd Pühlhofer (University of Tubingen, Germany), Nanda Rea (Anton Pannekoek Institute, The Netherlands, and Institute od Space Science, Spain).

A WG2 meeting of the COST Action NewCompStar will be organised in the afternoon of May 10th, on the topic "From experimental data to neutron stars".

Meeting place and dates

The workshop will take place from Tuesday, May 9th to Thursday, May, 11th 2017 at GANIL, Caen, France. 

The registration deadline is April, 25th 2017. 
The deadline for financial support request is March, 31st 2017 (notification for the support: April, 7th). 

Scientific Organizing committee