Skip to main content
Ctrl+K

PHY 521 Fall 2025

  • PHY 521: Stars

Equation of State

  • Solid or Gas?
  • Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution and Ideal Gas
  • Degenerate Electrons
  • EOS regimes
  • Electrons and Positrons

Convection

  • Convective temperature gradient
  • Simulating convection

Nuclear Properties

  • Mass Excess Visualized
  • Binding Energy per Nucleon

Reaction Rates

  • PP Chains
  • p-p chain vs. CNO
  • Helium Burning
  • Ratio of C/O from He burning
  • Explosive Nucleosynthesis

Integrating Stiff Networks

  • Integrating Stiff ODEs
    • Implicit Methods for ODEs
    • Implicit Methods for Systems of ODEs
    • Implicit Methods and Nonlinear Systems
    • C++ Solver for Stiff Nonlinear System
  • Application: Nuclear Reaction Networks
    • Integration Example

Stellar Models

  • Lane-Emden polytrope equation
  • Solving Lane-Emden via Shooting
  • Eddington Standard Model
  • Stellar Evolution in the ρ-T Plane

The Sun

  • Solar Convection Zone

WDs

  • WD Cooling

Close Binary Evolution

  • Equipotentials

Explosions!

  • hot-CNO and breakout
  • X-ray Burst Timing
  • One-zone X-ray Burst Model
  • Simple supernova lightcurve
  • Nuclear statistical equilibrium
  • Neutron star structure

Homework solutions

  • Homework 1 solutions
  • Homework 2 solutions
  • Homework 3 solutions
  • Homework 4 solutions
  • Homework 5 solutions
  • Homework 6 solutions
  • Homework 7 solutions
  • Repository
  • Open issue

Index

By Michael Zingale

© 2025; CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0