Leverhulme Lectures on Stellar Magnetism

Lecturer: John D. Landstreet
Leverhulme Visiting Professor

• E-mail me here
• Office Hours:  I will typically be around Queen's on the day of the class at QUB, and available at Armagh Observatory at least two or three days most weeks. Feel free to talk with me any time you see me, or e-mail me to make an appointment.
• My personal Web page

Course Description:

• This course will provide an overview of some of what is now known about the presence of magnetic fields in stars. It will cover both observational and theoretical aspects of the subject, including spectropolarimetric methods of detecting stellar fields, chariacteristics of stars in which magnetic fields are found, the use of the Stokes vector as a description of polarisation signals, spectrum synthesis and modelling as methods of analysing observations, and a discussion of the significance of magnetic fields in stellar evolution. You may download a
  more detailed outline here.
• Lectures: eight lecture hours total, one per week, normally Tuesdays at 11:30 in the Library at Armagh, and Mondays 12 - 1 at QUB in the seminar room. After the class, the lecture slides will be available for download here
  Lecture 1, an introduction to stellar magnetism
  Lecture 2, the physics of atoms in magnetic fields
  Lecture 3, measuring stellar magnetic fields
  Lecture 4, stellar magnetic fields and associated phenomena
  Lecture 5, a review of radiative transfer
  Lecture 6, applications of spectrum synthesis
  Lecture 7, magneto-hydrodynamics and the magnetic fields of white dwarfs
  Lecture 8, physics of pulsars; summary overview of stellar magnetism
• Reading: three chapters from a summer school (about 50 octavo pages total) will provide background reading, which may make it easier for you to follow the ideas. Download them here:
  Chapter 1 (Lectures 1 - 4)
  Chapter 2 (Lectures 5 - 6)
  Chapter 3 (Lectures 7 - 8).
• Exercises: I think that doing a number of exercises and problems is a really essential part of understanding a subject. It will make the hours you are putting into coming to lectures and reading far more valuable, and greatly increase your understanding of the subject. I have provided a large number of small (and hopefully fairly easy) practice problems that are closely linked to the material of the lectures. If you can do them easily, you understand the material pretty well. If you find them hard, it is particulalry important for you to tackle them, or much of your time attending will have been wasted. We can discuss any of the problems after classes or individually, as people prefer. Download these exercises here. Note that the problem material is not finished; it will be updated from time to time.
• A computer programme to try out: the magnetic line synthesis code Zeeman.

Last Revised: 2010 February 22nd