10 December: Mor Rozner

Speaker: Mor Rozner (University of Cambridge)

Date: Wednesday 10 December 2025

Time: 15:00

Location: Physics 3.21

From Few-Body to Stellar Clusters: How Gas Reshapes Dynamical Evolution

Gas-rich environments are ubiquitous across various scales, from protoplanetary discs to star clusters and galaxies. Dynamics in these environments are substantially different and give rise to unique astrophysical phenomena, while also enhancing the rates of well-studied ones. In this talk, I will demonstrate some of the unique processes in gas that alter the dynamics in several environments, including nuclear star clusters (NSCs), globular clusters (GCs), and star forming regions; if time allows, I will also discuss protoplanetary discs. I will discuss stellar distributions in gas-rich NSCs, their signatures, and implications for the rates of tidal disruption events (TDEs) and other transients in galactic nuclei.  The behaviour of binaries in gas-rich environments also differs qualitatively from that in gas-free regions, leading to enhanced formation of hard binaries,  preservation of fragile soft binaries, and even gas-assisted formation of binaries. The abundance of close binaries could potentially contribute to a unique gravitational wave channel in gas.