The Fireworks Initiative

Principal Objective:

The Fireworks Initiative is a new international network with the objective of understanding the diversity of explosive events in the Universe and their implications for the evolution of galaxies and the chemical evolution of the Universe. Initially, it is anticipated that it will be a loose network connecting centres of scientific excellence through international collaborations of its members and regular brain-storming workshops. It builds on successful existing collaborations (e.g. the ``Tokyo Think Tank'', two EU Resarch and Training networks, a Gemini GRB collaborations and several others).

Participating Institutions:

Oxford (Podsiadlowski)
Liverpool (Mazzali)
Caltech (Kulkarni)
Mount Stromlo (Schmidt)
Tokyo (Nomoto)
Weizmann (Gal-Yam)
Kavli Institute Santa Barbara (Bildsten)
University of Bonn (Langer)

Meetings:

Tokyo, December 2006: constituting meeting
Santa Barbara, March 2007
Tokyo, March 2008
Weizmann Institute of Science, December 14 - 21, 2008, Fireworks 2008: First Results from New Wide-Field Surveys (workshop poster)
University of Bonn, July 13 - 17, 2009, Fireworks 2009
Caltech, February 22 - 25, 2011, Fireworks 2011
Oxford, April 19 - 21, 2012, Fireworks 2012
Mount Stromlo, August 6 - 8, 2014, Fireworks 2014
Liverpool, June 2015, Fireworks 2015

Scientific Topics (evolving):

Progenitor evolution: understanding how rotation, binary interactions and metallicity affect the observed diversity
Supernova explosions (energetics, spectroscopy, nucleosynthesis): a new scheme for classifying supernovae and linking them to their progenitors
Observational campaigns of SNe and GRBs
High-energy astrophysics
The galaxy connection: how do SNe and GRBs affect the evolution of galaxies?