Welcome to Fridolin Weber's Home Page

 
Address: 
Fridolin Weber, PhD, PhD habil
Professor of Theoretical Physics
Associate Chair & Graduate Advisor
Department of Physics 
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-1233, USA

Phone: (619) 594 0239
Fax: (619) 594 5485
URL: http://rohan.sdsu.edu/~fweber

Email: fweber@sciences.sdsu.edu
 

Applications welcome for funded Ph.D. studies :

The Computational Science Research Center (CSRC) at San Diego State University (SDSU) invites students to apply for funded PhD studies in the areas of computational high-energy physics, nuclear many-body physics, relativistic astrophysics (compact stars), and General Relativity. The PhD applicants are required to have a Masters or Diploma Degree in physics, astronomy, or related fields. Successful applicants will be working with Prof. Fridolin Weber in the Department of Physics at SDSU. The CSRC provides an international environment with about 70 graduate students. Interested candidates should contact Prof. Fridolin Weber at fweber@sciences.sdsu.edu. The closing date for receipt of applications is January 15, 2010. For a complete description of the program including requirements please click here.
 
Competing structures and novel phases of subatomic matter predicted by theory to make their appearance inside of neutron stars.

Astrophysicists distinguish between three different types of compact stars. These are white dwarfs, neutron stars (see schematic illustration above), and black holes. The former contain matter in one of the densest forms found in the Universe which, together with the unprecedented progress in observational astronomy, make such stars superb astrophysical laboratories for a broad range of most striking physical phenomena. These range from nuclear processes on the stellar surface to processes in electron degenerate matter at subnuclear densities to boson condensates and the existence of new states of baryonic matter--like color superconducting quark matter--at supernuclear densities. More than that, according to the strange matter hypothesis strange quark matter could be more stable than nuclear matter, in which case neutron stars should be largely composed of pure quark matter possibly enveloped in thin nuclear crusts. Another remarkable implication of the hypothesis is the possible existence of a new class of white dwarfs referred to as strange dwarfs (for details, see "Strange Quark Matter and Compact Stars", Prog. Nucl. Part. Phys. 54 (2005) 193-288.)

Class Web Pages (Fall 2009, Spring 2008/2009):

Students working with me:


  • Melinda Toth (Nuclear equation of state)

  • Barbara Golf (Pycnonuclear reactions, strange quark matter)

  • Alex Ho (properties of rapidly rotating compact stars)

  • Joe Hellmers (Pycnonuclear reactions)

  • Matt Meixner (properties of asymmetric, relativistic nuclear matter)

  • Philip Rosenfield (properties of neutron star matter treated in the density dependent relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approximation)

  • Rodrogo Negreiros (neutron star cooling and pycnonuclear reactions in the crusts of neutron stars)

  • Ivan Hromada (neutron star cooling)

  • Eric McKenny (spin-up evolution of accreting neutron stars)

  • Omar Zubairi (Cosmological constant and compact stars)

     

    Visitors:


  • Andreu Torres i Cuadrat, Physics Department, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; January - July, 2005.

  • Morten Stejner Sand Pedersen, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; September 1, 2006 - February 28, 2007.

  • Brian Niebergal, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Canada; January 7, 2008 - June 2008.

     
     

    My areas of research:

    Semiclassical treatment of dense matter
    Relativistic superdense matter
    Quark matter in neutron stars
    Properties of (proto) neutron stars
    Physics and astrophysics of strange quark matter
    Properties of strange stars, strange dwarfs and strange planets
    General Relativity
    Rapid rotation of compact stars
    Cooling of compact stars
    Stellar pulsation
    Mass accrection onto neutron stars
    Gravity-wave instability in rotating neutron stars

     
     

          visitors since October 1999 

    Fridolin Weber, Web site last modified on 22 August 2007.