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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Tidal Disruption of Stars by Supermassive Black Holes

Stone, Nicholas Chamberlain 07 June 2014 (has links)
This thesis presents theoretical results on the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The multiwavelength ares produced by tidal disruption events (TDEs) have supernova-like luminosities, and associated relativistic jets can be visible to cosmological distances. TDEs probe the demography of quiescent SMBHs, and are natural laboratories for jet launching mechanisms and super-Eddington accretion. The first chapter broadly surveys TDE physics. The second and third chapters estimate the TDE rate following gravitational wave (GW) recoil of a SMBH (after a SMBH binary merger). Immediately after GW recoil, the TDE rate increases, sometimes to \(~10^{-1}\) TDEs per year. This "burst" of TDE flares can provide an electromagnetic counterpart to low frequency GW signals, localizing sources and measuring cosmological parameters. Millions of years later, recoiled SMBHs wandering through their host galaxies will produce spatially offset TDEs at a rate which is likely detectable with the LSST. In the fourth chapter, we show that standard estimates for \(\Delta\epsilon\), the energy spread of TDE debris, are wrong, sometimes by orders of magnitude. Correcting this error reduces the observability of many TDEs. We introduce a new analytic model for tidal disruption, calculate \(\Delta\epsilon\)'s dependence on stellar spin, estimate general relativistic corrections to \(\Delta\epsilon\), and quantify the GW signal generated from tidal compression. The fifth chapter presents hydrodynamical simulations of TDE debris circularization, focusing on eccentric, rather than parabolic, orbits. General relativistic precession drives debris circularization, in contrast to past simulations using smaller black holes. In the sixth chapter, we show that TDE light curves can constrain or measure SMBH spins, as Lense-Thirring torques produce quasiperiodic variability in disk emission. Precession of a relativistic jet could also measure SMBH spin, and we apply our model to the relativistic Swift 1644+57 TDE. The seventh chapter considers the disruption of neutron stars (NSs) by stellar mass black holes (BHs) or other NSs. Jet precession in associated short-hard gamma ray bursts is uniquely possible for NS-BH (not NS-NS) mergers. We quantify typical precession amplitudes and periods, and calculate their time evolution. If disk viscosities are relatively low, electromagnetic observations alone could distinguish NS-BH from NS-NS mergers. / Astronomy
2

Ultraluminous sources in X-ray sky surveys

Colom i Bernadich, Miquel January 2020 (has links)
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extragalactic, non-nuclear, point-like X-ray sources whose luminosity supersedes that of the Eddington limit of an accreting stellar mass black hole (L&gt; 10 ^ 39 erg / s). Most of them are powered by black holes and neutron stars undergoing genuine super-Eddington accretion, with a small handful of candidates being consistent with sub-Eddington accretion on an intermediate mass black hole. In this thesis, we explore the populations of ULXs in the sky surveys of ESA's X-ray satellite, XMM-Newton, and the MPE's newly launched X-ray telescope, eROSITA. We do so by correlating them with the HECATE list of galaxiesto build two X-ray non-nuclear catalogs, and comparing the yields with very expensive surveys and previous works. To build a catalog, we useother reference lists of contaminant objects, such as the Gaia data releases, the SIMBAD database or the SDSS survey to look for contaminating objects of diverse nature, such as foreground stars or background quasars, in order to make sure that our resulting ULX samples are as clean as possiblewith catalog data only. Our results include the attestation that the XMM-Newton ninth data release provides an improvement in quantity and quality with respect to older data releases used in previous works, and that the eROSITA survey is currently in a very preliminary stage. The two new catalogs contain 12,952 and 3,720 non-nuclear X-ray sources, out of which 914 and 132 are ULX candidates with an expected ~ 25% fraction of undetected contaminants. This constitutes a very significant contribution to the already known 300 ULX candidates. Since the sky coverage and depth of the XMM-Newton and eROSITA surveys are vastly different, only 19 of the ULX candidates are shared between the catalogs. ULX candidates are preferentially found in star-forming galaxies, but a subset of very bright objects (L&gt; 5x10 ^ 40 erg / s) try to be more common in elliptical galaxies, in contradiction to what has been established in the literature. / <p>This thesis was written under the joint supervision of Erin O'Sullivan at Uppsala University and Axel Schwope at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam. The presentation was held online due to the COVID-19 circumstances.</p> / Master Thesis
3

Développement d'un simulateur pour le X-ray integral field unit : du signal astrophysique à la performance instrumentale / Development of an End-to-End simulator for the X-ray Integral Field Unit : from the astrophysical signal to the instrument performance

Peille, Philippe 28 September 2016 (has links)
Cette thèse est consacrée au développement d'un modèle End-to-End pour le spectrocalorimètre X-IFU qui observera à partir de 2028 l'Univers en rayons X avec une précision jamais atteinte auparavant. Ce travail s'est essentiellement organisé en deux parties. J'ai dans un premier temps étudié la dynamique des parties les plus internes des binaires X de faible masse à l'aide de deux sondes particulières que sont les sursauts X et les oscillations quasi-périodiques au kHz (kHz QPOs). En me basant sur les données d'archive du satellite Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer et sur des méthodes d'analyse spécifiquement développées dans ce but, j'ai notamment pu mettre en évidence pour la première fois une réaction du premier sur le second, confirmant le lien très étroit entre ces oscillations et les parties les plus internes du système. Le temps de rétablissement du système suite aux sursauts entre également en conflit dans la plupart des cas avec l'augmentation supposée du taux d'accrétion suite à ces explosions. Au travers d'une analyse spectro-temporelle complète des deux kHz QPOs de 4U 1728-34, j'ai également pu confirmer l'incompatibilité des spectres de retard des deux QPOs qui suggère une origine différente de ces deux oscillations. L'étude de leurs spectres de covariance, obtenus pour la première fois dans cette thèse, a quant à elle mis en évidence le rôle central de la couche de Comptonisation et potentiellement celui d'une zone particulièrement compacte de la couche limite pour l'émission des QPOs. Dans le second volet de ma thèse, j'ai développé un simulateur End-to-End pour l'instrument X-IFU permettant de représenter l'ensemble du processus menant à une observation scientifique en rayons X, de l'émission des photons par une source jusqu'à leur mesure finale à bord du satellite. J'ai notamment mis en place des outils permettant la comparaison précise de plusieurs matrices de détecteurs en prenant en compte les effets de la reconstruction du signal brut issu des électroniques de lecture. Cette étude a mis en évidence l'intérêt de configurations hybrides, contenant une sous-matrice de petits pixels capables d'améliorer par un ordre de grandeur la capacité de comptage de l'instrument. Une solution alternative consisterait à défocaliser le miroir lors de l'observation de sources ponctuelles brillantes. Situées au coeur de la performance du X-IFU, j'ai également comparé de manière exhaustive différentes méthodes de reconstruction des signaux bruts issus des détecteurs X-IFU. Ceci a permis de montrer qu'à faible coût en termes de puissance de calcul embarquée, une amélioration significative de la résolution en énergie finale de l'instrument pouvait être obtenue à l'aide d'algorithmes plus sophistiqués. En tenant compte des contraintes de calibration, le candidat le plus prometteur apparaît aujourd'hui être l'analyse dans l'espace de résistance. En me servant de la caractérisation des performances des différents types de pixels, j'ai également mis en place une méthode de simulation rapide et modulable de l'ensemble de l'instrument permettant d'obtenir des observations synthétiques à long temps d'exposition de sources X très complexes, représentatives des futures capacités du X-IFU. Cet outil m'a notamment permis d'étudier la sensibilité de cet instrument aux effets de temps mort et de confusion, mais également d'estimer sa future capacité à distinguer différents régimes de turbulence dans les amas de galaxies et de mesurer leur profil d'abondance et de température. A plus long terme ce simulateur pourra servir à l'étude d'autres cas scientifiques, ainsi qu'à l'analyse d'effets à l'échelle de l'ensemble du plan de détection tels que la diaphonie entre pixels. / This thesis is dedicated to the development of an End-ta-End model for the X-IFU spectrocalorimeter scheduled for launch in 2028 on board the Athena mission and which will observe the X-ray universe with unprecedented precision. This work has been mainly organized in two parts. I studied first the dynamics of the innermost parts of low mass X-ray binaries using two specific probes of the accretion flow: type I X-ray bursts and kHz quasi-periodic oscillations (kHz QPOs). Starting from the archivai data of the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer mission and using specific data analysis techniques, I notably highlighted for the first time a reaction of the latter to the former, confirming the tight link between this oscillation and the inner parts of the system. The measured recovery time was also found in conflict with recent claims of an enhancement of the accretion rate following these thermonuclear explosions. From the exhaustive spectral timing analysis of both kHz QPOs in 4U 1728-34, I further confirmed the inconsistancy of their lag energy spectra, pointing towards a different origin for these two oscillations. The study of their covariance spectra, obtained here for the first time, has revealed the key role of the Comptonization layer, and potentially of a more compact part of it, in the emission of the QPOs. In the second part of my thesis, I focused on the development of an End-to-:End simulator for the X-IFU capable of depicting the full process leading to an X-ray observation, from the photon emission by the astrophysical source to their on-board detection. I notably implemented tools allowing the precise comparison of different potential pixel array configurations taking into account the effects of the event reconstruction from the raw data coming from the readout electronics. This study highlighted the advantage of using hybrid arrays containing a small pixel sub-array capable of improving by an order of magnitude the count rate capability of the instrument. An alternative solution would consist in defocusing the mirror during the observation of bright point sources. Being a key component of the overall X-IFU performance, I also thoroughly compared different reconstruction methods of the pixel raw signal. This showed that with a minimal impact on the required on-board processing power, a significant improvement of the final energy resolution could be obtained from more sophisticated reconstruction methods. Taking into account the calibration constraints, the most promising candidate currently appears to be the so-called "resistance space analysis". Taking advantage of the obtained performance characterization of the different foreseen pixel types, I also developed a fast and modular simulation method of the complete instrument providing representative synthetic observations with long exposure times of complex astrophysical sources suffinguish different turbulence regimes in galaxy clusters and to measure abundance and temperature profiles. In the longer run, this simulator will be useful for the study of other scientific cases as well as the analysis of instrumental effects at the full detection plane level such as pixel crosstalk.

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