Unravelling the Nature of Astrophysical Transients

Core-collapse supernovae are the most powerful explosions occurring in our Universe, marking the death of massive stars. Supernovae are factories of the chemical elements essential to our life and play a key role in the formation of new stars. Our understanding of the mechanism giving origin to these cosmic fireworks has been challenged by the discovery of an enormous number of transients previously unknown. What is even more fascinating is that these transients are also promising sources of the most energetic particles ever observed: cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos, whose origin is a longstanding puzzle. Understanding which kind of stars die as supernovae, and under which conditions, are fundamental questions in astrophysics. I aim at developing a unified and based-on-first principles model for the production of photons, neutrinos, and cosmic rays in the most energetic and mysterious events occurring in the universe. Only by exploiting multi-messenger synergies, can we have a clear picture of how different astrophysical transients originate, how they are powered, and answer the longstanding questions about particle production, acceleration, and interaction at extreme energies.