PHY983 Spring 2009
Term Paper

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For your PHY983 term paper and presentation you are free to choose a topic that you are interested in. The topic needs to be approved by me before the Feb 15 deadline. Some guidelines for a good topic:

• related to nuclear astrophysics, ideally not centrally covered in the course (though almost all topics can be elaborated on)
• not too broad and general - the topic should be at the forefront of the field and of current interest
• not too narrow - topic should be put into a broad context of the current state of the field. Contents and relevance of the paper and the presentation should be understandable to non-experts (your fellow students in the class)

Here a list of possible topics, in case you need some inspiration:

• Neutron stars: observation and interior structure

• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

• Cosmic Rays

• Neutrino Astronomy

• Gravitational wave astronomy

• Type Ia supernova progenitors

• Type Ia supernovae: observation and explosion models

• Gamma Ray Bursts

• Magnetars and soft gamma ray repeaters

• Mass measurements and mass models in nuclear astrophysics

• Core collapse supernova models: challenges and current status

• Helioseismology

• Magnetars

• The First Stars

• Coulomb breakup measurements in nuclear astrophysics

• Photon induced reactions in nuclear astrophysics