Understanding the Last Mile - Physics of the Accretion Column
Abstract
Accreting X-ray pulsars are among the best observed objects of X-ray astronomy with a rich data set of observational phenomena in the spectral and timing domain. While the general picture for these sources is well established, the detailed physics behind the observed phenomena are often subject of debate. We present recent observational, theoretical and modeling results for the structure and dynamics of the accretion column in these systems. Our results indicate the presence of different accretion regimes and possible explanations for observed variations of spectral features with luminosity.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1211.3916,
title = {Understanding the Last Mile - Physics of the Accretion Column},
author = {Peter Kretschmar and Peter A. Becker and Dipankar Bhattacharya and Isabel Caballero and Thomas Dauser and Carlo Ferrigno and Dmitry Klochkov and Ingo Kreykenbohm and Osamu Nishimura and Katja Pottschmidt and Richard E. Rothschild and Andrea Santangelo and Gabriele Schönherr and Fritz-Walter Schwarm and Rüdiger Staubert and Slawomir Suchy and Brent West and Jörn Wilms and Michael Wolff and Kenneth Wolfram},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.3916},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
4 pages, no figures. Proceedings of IAU Symposium 290, "Feeding Compact Objects: Accretion on All Scales", C. M. Zhang, T. Belloni, M. Mendez & S. N. Zhang (eds.)