Nominator's project description
| Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), sudden releases of huge amounts of gamma-radiation, are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, signalling the death of massive stars, with the subsequent formation of a black hole. The interaction of the explosion's blast wave with the surrounding interstellar material creates a so-called afterglow. Dr. Schady was the first to find convincing evidence that dust extinction is the cause for "dark bursts", afterglows lacking optical radiation. Thereafter, she was the first to derive a mean extinction law for GRBs taking into account the circumburst environment, providing information on the possible progenitors of GRBs. With her proposed research project Dr. Schady combines the exploitation of leading instrumentation, with comprehensive modeling of the complex, time-dependent physical processes in the surroundings of GRBs. This promises to reveal the link between metallicity-dependent star formation in the Early Universe, dust formation in supernovae, and dust destruction by explosive events like GRBs. |
