Physics

Prof. Banibrata Mukhopadhyay
IISc, Bangalore

Abstract:
Two of the most celebrated discoveries in 20th century were Einstein's equation of general relativity and Chandrasekhar's mass-limit of white dwarfs. In this talk, I will attempt to unfold the applications of them  and modifications to the original form of those discoveries in order to describe today's Universe, e.g. identifying spinning black holes, explaining peculiar type Ia supernovae etc. In the circumstance of 21st century, while both the discoveries play indispensable roles, two questions arise: Is Chandrasekhar's mass-limit unique? Is Einstein's general relativity the ultimate theory for understanding astronomical phenomena? Both the answers seem to be no! Moreover, in the contexts of black holes and evolution of white dwarfs, turbulent accretion plays extremely important roles, which, however, is linearly stable, which is, in fact, related to the century old problem of linear instability in Rayleigh stable shear flows. I will, hence, also touch upon, how to resolve this issue. Some of the references of my group, upon which the talk is based, are the following:

1. Banerjee, I., Mukhopadhyay, B., Phys. Rev. Lett., 111, 061101, 2013
2. Das, U., Mukhopadhyay, B., Phys. Rev. Lett., 110, 071102, 2013
3. Mukhopadhyay, B., Phys. Rev. Lett., 112, 229001, 2014
4. Das, U., Mukhopadhyay, B., JCAP, 05, 045, 2015
5. Subramanian, S., Mukhopadhyay, B., MNRAS, 454, 752, 2015