Related papers: Tomography of Polars
Absorption imaging and spectroscopy can probe the dynamics of an ultracold neutral plasma during the first few microseconds after its creation. Quantitative analysis of the data, however, is complicated by the inhomogeneous density…
Millisecond pulsar (MSP) binaries are unique laboratories for studying matter and radiation under extreme conditions that are unattainable on Earth. Recent detections of optical millisecond pulsations from three systems in distinct…
We present a method for finding binaries among pulsating stars that were observed by the Kepler Mission. We use entire four-year light curves to accurately measure the frequencies of the strongest pulsation modes, then track the pulsation…
While amongst the most luminous objects in the universe, many details regarding the inner structure of quasars remain unknown. One such area is the mechanism promoting increased polarisation in the broad absorption line troughs of certain…
We present an analytical and numerical study of a system composed of a stellar binary pair and a massless, locally isothermal viscous accretion disk that is coplanar to the binary orbital plane. Analytically, we study the effect of the…
Continuous and precise space-based photometry has made it possible to measure the orbital frequency modulation of pulsating stars in binary systems with extremely high precision over long time spans. Frequency modulation caused by binary…
Circular dichroism spectroscopy is an essential technique for understanding molecular structure and magnetic materials, but spatial resolution is limited by the wavelength of light, and sensitivity sufficient for single-molecule…
This paper reviews methods which can be used to detect binaries involving low- and intermediate-mass stars, with special emphasis on evolved systems. Besides the traditional methods involving radial-velocity or photometric monitoring, the…
It is well known that magnetic activity in late-type stars increases with increasing rotation rate. Using inversion techniques akin to medical imaging, the rotationally broadened profiles from such stars can be used to reconstruct `Doppler…
Galactic accretion driven stellar X-ray sources can be divided into groups in different ways. An important division, which covers almost all known X-ray binaries, can be made according to the mass of the donor star: high-mass X-ray binaries…
Companion stars exposed to high energy radiation from a primary neutron star or accreting black hole can experience significant spallation of their heavy elements, so that their atmospheres would be extremely rich in lithium, beryllium, and…
Polarimetry of extrasolar planets becomes a new tool for their investigation, which requires the development of diagnostic techniques and parameter case studies. Our goal is to develop a theoretical model which can be applied to interpret…
X-ray polarimetry is now providing a new way to look at the high energy sky. The addition of two observables, polarization fraction and angle, reveals crucial new information on the structure of accretion flows and magnetic fields in…
I review recent activity in the field of intermediate polars, concentrating on: the mode of accretion (disc-fed, disc-overflow or discless); accretion curtains (the transition region and the accretion footprint); X-ray pulse profiles…
Pulsating stars in eclipsing binary systems are powerful tools to test stellar models. Binarity enables to constrain the pulsating component physical parameters, whose knowledge drastically improves the input physics for asteroseismic…
This study investigates the polarization characteristics of solitonic boson stars surrounded by a thin accretion disk. By comparing their polarization images with corresponding optical images, we find a positive correlation between the…
The polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
Classical T Tauri stars are encircled by accretion discs most of the time unresolved by conventional imaging observation. However, numerical simulations show that unresolved aperture linear polarimetry can be used to extract information…
We introduce our PhD project in which we focus on pulsating stars in eclipsing binaries. The combination of high-precision Kepler photometry with high-resolution HERMES spectroscopy allows for detailed descriptions of our sample of target…
Asteroseismology has the capability of delivering stellar properties which would otherwise be inaccessible, such as radii, masses and thus ages of stars. When coupling this information with classical determinations of stellar parameters,…