Journal Club with lunch provided!  Friday, April 14 in Marlar Lounge

Megan Masterson (faculty advisor: Erin Kara)
Tidal Disruption Event Demographics with the Zwicky Transient Facility: Volumetric Rates, Luminosity Function, and Implications for the Local Black Hole Mass Function

Daniele Michilli
Detecting strongly-lensed fast radio bursts
Strong gravitational lensing has several astrophysical applications. Among these, the time interval between multiple images of a varying source can be used to measure characteristics of the lens, such as matter distribution and magnetic fields, and parameters of the Universe, chiefly the Hubble constant. However, the precision of these experiments is limited by the characteristics of sources traditionally used such as AGNs. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a class of extragalactic radio transients that, instead, present perfect characteristics for this kind of experiment. Unfortunately, current telescopes are not able to detect enough strongly-lensed FRBs. In this talk, I will describe an observing strategy that makes use of a new generation of instruments currently under development together with new catalogs of lensed galaxies produced by upcoming surveys such as Euclid and LSST. I will also present preliminary results from a simulation I am writing to quantify the detection rate of strongly-lensed FRBs in the near future.