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Colloquium - Julie McEnery (University of Maryland) "Exploring the Extreme Universe with Fermi"

A picture of Julie McEnery.
October 15, 2013
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
1080 Smith Seminar Room, Physics Research Building - Reception to be held in the Atrium at 3:45 PM

Following its launch in June 2008, high-energy gamma-ray observations by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have unveiled over 1000 new sources and opened an important and previously unexplored window on a wide variety of phenomena. These have included the discovery of an population of pulsars pulsing only in gamma rays; the detection of photons up to 10s of GeV from gamma-ray bursts, enhancing our understanding of the astrophysics of these powerful explosions; the detection of hundreds of active galaxies; a measurement of the high energy cosmic-ray electron spectrum which may imply the presence of
nearby astrophysical particle accelerators; the determination of the diffuse gamma-ray emission with unprecedented accuracy and the constraints on phenomena such as supersymmetric dark-matter annihilations and exotic relics from the Big Bang.  Continuous monitoring of the high-energy gamma-ray sky has uncovered numerous outbursts from active galaxies and the discovery of transient sources in our galaxy. In this talk I will describe the current status of the Fermi observatory, review the science highlights and discuss future opportunities with Fermi.