PHY 521: Stars
A graduate class covering stellar interiors, evolution and death, and atmospheres
Instructor: Michael Zingale
Fall 2025∗ Course information
syllabus: see Brightspace for the latest syllabus.
assignments: all homeworks will be assigned and turned in via Brightspace.
∗ Online resources
- The electronic content associated with our recommended text is available here: Extra Materials for Stellar Evolution
- Our other recommended text is available online: Stellar Physics
- Stellar Structure and Evolution Notes by Onno Pols
∗ Software tools
- The MESA stellar evolution code: this is a widely-used stellar evolution code that can evolve stars from pre-main sequence through white dwarf formation / supernova.
- MESA-Web: run MESA online!
- pynucastro: this is a python library for exploring nuclear reaction rates and networks.
∗ Numerical overview
Here are some notes on numerical methods to help you with some of the computational parts of the assignments.
∗ Lecture schedule
Note: the topics may shift a bit depending on our interests.
| # | date | topic | notes/readings | numerical examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8-26 | general overview | overview.pdf | |
| 2 | 8-28 | preliminaries | HKT Ch 1; preliminaries.pdf | |
| 3 | 9-02 | preliminaries (cont.) | ||
| 4 | 9-04 | stellar evolution overview | HKT Ch 2; stellar-evolution-overview.pdf; main-sequence-scaling.pdf | |
| 5 | 9-09 | stellar evolution (cont.) | ||
| 6 | 9-11 | equation of state | HKT Ch 3;
eos.pdf Jupyter notebook exploring degeneracy Understanding the Chemical Potential by Cook & Dickerson | degenerate electrons |
| 7 | 9-16 | equation of state | EOS regimes | |
| 8 | 9-18 | radiation and conduction | HKT Ch 4; radiation.pdf | |
| 9 | 9-23 | radiation and conduction (cont.) | ||
| 10 | 9-25 | radiation / atmospheres | ||
| 11 | 09-30 | convection | HKT Ch 5; convection.pdf | |
| 12 | 10-02 | radiation, conduction, and convection some more... | rad-cond.pdf convection-more.pdf convection movies: [1] [2] [3] | |
| 13 | 10-07 | stellar energy sources | HKT CH 6; reactions.pdf | p-p vs. CNO |
| 14 | 10-09 | stellar energy sources | energy.pdf | integrating reaction networks |
| 15 | 10-16 | stellar models | HKT CH 7; models.pdf | solving Lane-Emden |
| 16 | 10-21 | stellar models (cont.) | polytrope-applications.pdf | |
| 17 | 10-23 | more stellar evolution | more-stellar-evolution.pdf | exploring MESA models |
| 18 | 10-28 | the Sun | HKT Ch 9; sun.pdf | |
| 19 | 10-30 | the Sun | ||
| 20 | 11-04 | white dwarfs | HKT Ch 10; wd.pdf wd_cooling.pdf | |
| 21 | 11-06 | close binary evolution | binary-nova-xrb.pdf | equipotentials |
| 22 | 11-11 | nova / X-ray bursts | Thermonuclear Burning on Rapidly Accreting Neutron Stars by Bildsten | hot-CNO |
| 23 | 11-13 | Type Ia supernova | typeia-supernovae.pdf | |
| 24 | 11-18 | core collapse SNe & neutron stars | core-collapse-neutron-stars.pdf; Onno Pols notes on massive star evolution; Explosion Mechanisms of Core-Collapse Supernovae by Janka; Order-of-magnitude physics of neutron stars by Reisenegger & Zepeda | nuclear statistical equilibrium |
| 25 | 11-20 | core-collapse SNe & neutron stars | neutron star structure | |
| 26 | 11-25 | star formation | formation.pdf | |
| 27 | 12-02 | student presentations: |
||
| 28 | 12-04 | student presentations: |