This thesis is a detailed observational study of the accretion processes in T Tauri stars (TTS). The interaction between the central star, the circumstellar disk and the magnetic field gives rise to a wide range of features in the spectra of TTS. The current picture of TTS is based on rather simple models assuming that accretion is a homogeneous and axisymmetric process. Although these models have been successful in explaining some observational signatures of TTS such as the shape of emission lines, the static nature of these models makes them unsuitable for describing the strong variability of the veiling spectrum and emission lines of TTS. An improved understanding of this variability is of key importance to study the dynamic processes related to the accretion flow and the winds. This study is based on a set of high-quality spectroscopic observations with the UVES spectrograph at the 8-m VLT in 2000 and 2002. These spectra, with exposure times as short as 10-15 minutes, have high spectral resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios and cover a large part of the optical wavelength range. From this dataset we determine the basic physical parameters of several TTS and model their photospheres. These models then serve as a basis for a detailed investigation of variations of the veiling continuum and line emission. We confirm that the level of veiling correlates with some of the strongest emission lines and that coherent changes in accretion occur on a timescale of a few hours, comparable to the free-fall time from the disk to the star. From the properties of the emission lines formed close to the central star and in the stellar wind we derive restrictions on the geometry of the observed systems. Because the intrinsic axial symmetry of a single star makes it almost impossible to disentangle rotational modulation from inhomogeneity and axial asymmetry of the accretion flow, we study a series of spectra of a close spectroscopic binary at different orbital phases and derive the 3D structure of flows between the disk and the star. Finally, we calculate the profiles of hydrogen emission lines by iteratively solving 3D NLTE radiative transfer in a state-of-the-art magnetospheric model.

Städer och regioner runt om i världen konkurrerar ständigt med varandra i strävan efter ett gemensamt mål; en ökad tillväxt. För att nå målet måste platserna både attrahera resurser utifrån och mobilisera de interna resurser som redan finns. Platser som förknippas med tillväxt, attraktiva boendemiljöer eller exklusiva turistupplevelser har ett försprång gentemot regioner som förknippas med utflyttning, nedläggningar och sociala problem. Piteå är en mindre kommun i Norrbotten, en region som brottas med utflyttning och negativa befolkningsutvecklingar. Syftet med föreliggande uppsats är att ta reda på vad Piteås kommun och näringsliv gör och vad de kan göra för att öka sin attraktivitet, som i sin tur skall leda till en ökad besöksnäring, ökad inflyttning och nyetableringar av företag. Vidare undersöks vilka faktorer som påverkar attraktiviteten för en stad. Ytterligare är ett syfte att se hur samverkan fungerar mellan kommunen och olika aktörer i Piteå. För att kunna uppfylla syftet har kvalitativa metoder i form av djupintervjuer använts med några betydande aktörer samt Piteå kommun. Resultatet av studien har visat att samverkan i Piteå kommun är väl fungerande men att tillgängligheten till och från staden för godstrafik är begränsad samtidigt som passagerartrafik med tåg är obefintlig. Piteå är en stark evenemangsstad och i dagsläget sker även stora satsningar inom energiområdet, vilket kan öppna för stora möjligheter i framtiden. / Cities and regions all over the world are constantly competing in the will for the same goal; an increased accretion. To reach the goal the places have to attract resources from the outside and mobilise the internal resources they already have. Places that are associated with accretion, attractive living environments, or exclusive tourist experiences have a head-start to the places that are associated with out-migration, discontinuation, and social problems. Piteå is a smaller municipality in Norrbotten; a region that struggles with emigration and negative population developments. The purpose with the following thesis is to find out what the municipality and the commercial and industrial life in Piteå does to increase their attractiveness. Which will lead to an increased tourist business, an increased in-migration and establishments of new business corporations? A further examination is about what factors that affect the attractiveness for a city. Another purpose is to see how interactivity between the municipality in Piteå and the commercial and industrial life works. To fulfil the purpose qualitative methods in the shape of interviews with some significant enterprisers and the municipality in Piteå has been used. The result of the study has shown that the interaction between the municipality and the commercial and industrial life in Piteå is in working order, but the accessibility to and from the city with goods traffic is limited at the same time as passenger traffic is nonexistent. Piteå is a strong in arranging events and in the present situation big investments in the energy field is made, which opens up for big opportunities in the future.

Wind turbines often operate under cold weather conditions where icing may occur. Icing causes the blade sections to stall prematurely reducing the power production at a given wind speed. The unsteady aerodynamic loads associated with icing can accelerate blade structural fatigue and creates safety concerns. In this work, the combined blade element-momentum theory is used to compute the air loads on the baseline rotor blades, prior to icing. At each blade section, a Lagrangian particle trajectory model is used to model the water droplet trajectories and their impact on the blade surface. An extended Messinger model is next used to solve the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy equations in the boundary layer over the surface, and to determine ice accretion rate. Finally, the aerodynamic characteristics of the iced blade sections are estimated using XFOIL, which initiate the next iteration step for the computation of air loads via combined blade element theory. The procedure repeats until a desired exposure time is achieved. The performance degradation is then predicted, based on the aerodynamic characteristics of the final iced blades. The 2-D ice shapes obtained are compared against experimental data at several representative atmospheric conditions with acceptable agreement. The performance of a generic experimental wind turbine rotor exposed to icing climate is simulated to obtain the power loss and identify the critical locations on the blade. The results suggest the outboard of the blade is more prone to ice accumulation causing considerable loss of lift at these sections. Also, the blades operating at a higher pitch are expected to accumulate more ice. The loss in power ranges from 10% to 50% of the rated power for different pitch settings under the same operating conditions.

It is now widely known that most of the large galaxies we observe (e.g. the Milky Way) host in their center a supermassive black hole ($10^{6}-10^{9}$ $M_\odot$). Several relationships between the central black hole mass and the properties of the stars in the central part of the galaxy have been established in the past 3 decades indicating that the central black hole is able to efficiently structure the matter around it due to episodes of accretion of matter onto the black hole. Recent infrared and optical sky surveys have detected supermassive black holes with masses around $10^{8-9}$ $M_\odot$ when the universe was less than a tenth of its current age and current theories have difficulties explaining how such massive objects could have formed over such short timescales. The goal of the present work is to shed light on the properties of a still largely unknown extreme accretion regime, the so called super-Eddington accretion regime. If such accretion regime could be sustained over sufficient timescales, it could play an important role in both the rapid growth of supermassive black holes as well as its co-evolution with its host galaxy. The aim of this work is therefore to apply high resolution spectroscopy to Ultraluminous X-ray sources in order to identify narrow spectral features to derive constrains on the outflows expected from super-Eddington accreting sources using data from the XMM-Newton observatory. For this purpose I developed a framework to analyse low count background dominated spectra that uses a Monte Carlo approach to detect these narrow features. After analysis of the source Holmberg II X-1, I identify 7 unresolved discrete features with a 3$\sigma$ confidence level that can be tentatively identified with ionic species. Furthermore, the instrumental resolution allows us to put upper limits on the broadening of the lines. This findings will allow us to probe the properties of the outflows of the super-Eddington regime and by extending the analysis to other sources we will able to characterize the observational properties of this accretion regime.

Ce travail de thèse cherche à caractériser, à l'aide d’expériences de laboratoire, le mouvement d'un fluide stratifié à la fois tournant et cisaillé. Dans ce contexte on a considéré trois problèmes qui sont issus des observations géophysiques et astrophysiques où ces écoulements sont très communs. En premier nous avons observé expérimentalement et modélisé l'évolution en temps d'un anticyclone en milieu stratifié tournant, dans le but de comprendre la longévité des meddies, des vortex qui se forment à la sortie de la Méditerranée et peuvent perdurer pendant des années. Nos anticyclones modèles montrent une relaxation visqueuse anormale en raison de l’interaction entre stratification et cisaillement. Nos résultats expérimentaux ont été confirmés à l'aide d'un modèle géostrophique et de simulations numériques qui montrent aussi le rôle majeur joué par les circulations secondaires. Dans un deuxième temps nous avons considéré la stabilité linéaire de l'écoulement de Couette Plan, un des plus simple des écoulement plans cisaillés. On montre que cet écoulement devient instable lorsque l'on ajoute de la stratification verticale. Nous remarquons aussi que la structure spatiale de l'instabilité ressemble à celle de certains jets océaniques que l'on observe près de l'équateur. Enfin nous avons caractérisé une instabilité non linéaire dite des zombie vortex qui a été récemment découverte et pourrait jouer un rôle fondamental dans la déstabilisation des disques d'accrétion, une étape fondamentale de la formation des planétaire. Nous avons construit le diagramme de stabilité de la ZVI dans l'espace de trois fréquences caractéristiques et quantifié la dissipation visqueuse. / The present PhD work comes with the scope of characterizing, analysing and modelling some laboratory flows in the simultaneous presence of rotation, stratification and shear. To this aim we address three specific questions inspired by geophysics and astrophysics where these three ambient features are commonly relevant. First we characterize and model the time evolution of a compact anticyclone in a rotating and stratified laboratory flow. We aim to understand the longevity of analogous vortices known as meddies which populate the Atlantic ocean at the exit of the Mediterranean sea. We observe that viscous relaxation happens in an unusual way because of the balance between rotation and stratification. The results are confirmed by a quasi-geostrophic model and numerical simulations which show the crucial role played by secondary circulations. Secondly we consider the linear stability of one of the simplest parallel shear flow, namely the plane Couette Flow, and show that it becomes unstable when adding a vertical stratification. Interestingly the unstable pattern reminds of deep oceanic jets observed close to the equator. The signature of this instability is observed in an ad-hoc experimental flow and interpreted with the support of direct numerical simulations. Finally we characterize the behaviour of a recently disclosed finite amplitude instability, namely the zombie vortex instability or ZVI. This instability appears when rotation, stratification and shear are of the same order and may may destabilize proto-planetary disks. We construct a stability diagram for ZVI in the space of the three ambient frequencies and analyse the effect of viscous dissipation.

Les chocs radiatifs sont des chocs très violents qui sont caractérisés par des températures très élevées. Dans ce type de structure, une grande partie de l’énergie est convertie en rayonnement. Ces chocs sont présents dans de nombreux plasmas astrophysiques, notamment dans le cadre des jets et de l’accrétion stellaires, des restes de supernova etc. Ils peuvent être désormais générés sur terre en utilisant des lasers de grande puissance ce qui permet leur étude à l’interface entre l’astrophysique et la physique des plasmas.Cette thèse présente et discute les résultats d’une expérience réalisées sur l’installation Prague Asterix Laser System. Le choc est généré en focalisant le laser Infrarouge sur une cible de quelques millimètres de long, remplie de xénon à basse pression. Le choc ainsi généré se propage dans le gaz à une vitesse élevée, permettant d’atteindre le régime des chocs dom- inés par le flux radiatif. Nous avons utilisé différents diagnostics pour caractériser le choc, notamment une radiographie éclair, à l’aide d’un laser (Zinc) à 21.2 nm, capable de pénétrer les parties denses du plasma. Un autre important diagnostique consiste à analyser l’émission propre du plasma à l’aide d’une diode rapide.Les résultats expérimentaux montrent pour la première fois, et sans ambiguïté, une structure de choc complète, comprenant le post-choc et le précurseur. Nous avons aussi réalisé différentes mesures de la vitesse des chocs. Les résultats ont été comparés à ceux de simulations numériques, montrant un bon accord avec ces dernières. / Radiative shocks are strong shocks which are characterized by a plasma at high temperatures emitting an important fraction of its energy as radiation. Radiative shocks are found in many astrophysical systems, including stellar accretion shocks, supernovae remnants, jet driven shocks, etc. Recently, radiative shocks have also been produced experimentally using high energy lasers. Thus opening the way to laboratory astrophysics studies of these universal phenomena.In this thesis we discuss the results of an experiment performed on the Prague Asterix Laser System facility. Shocks are generated by focusing the PALS Infrared laser beam on millimetre-scale targets filled with xenon gas at low pressure. The shock that is generated then propagates in the gas with a sufficiently high velocity such that the shock is in a radiative flux dominated regime. We used different diagnostics to characterize these shocks. The two main ones include a radiography of the whole shock structure using sub-nanosecond Zn X-ray laser at 21.2 nm, which is able to penetrate the dense post-shock layer, and a space-and-time resolved plasma self-emission using high speed diodes.The experimental results show, for the first time, an unambiguous shock structure which includes both the post-shock and the precursor, and we also obtained multiple shock velocity measurements from the different diagnostics. The experimental results are compared to simulations, and show good agreement with the numerical results.

This thesis describes the analysis of Very High Energy (VHE) emission from the Active Galactic Nucleus PKS 0537-441. It also aims to put the results in a wider context by implementing previous work done on this source. The data chosen for the analysis is provided by the Fermi-LAT satellite and covers the energy range between 300 MeV and 300 GeV. Initially a lightcurve of the received flux from the source was generated, containing data from August 2008 to April 2017, with a mean flux of 4∗10−8 photons per second per squared centimeter. The lightcurve contained sections of different flux intensities giving periods of special interest, such as a flaring period at August 2008 to August 2011, an enormous flare at April 2010 and a less active period between April 2013 - January 2016 that could be identified for further investigations. The differences in observed flux over time was tested and PKS 0537-441 was found to be a significantly variable source. Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) analysis was performed over both the entire period as well as over the selected subperiods and fitted against models using the tools provided by the Fermi Science Support Center (FSSC). The models used in the fitting was PowerLaw2, LogParabola and PLSuperExpCutoff and the best fit for the data was obtained from the PLSuperExpCutoff, except for the less intense period where the LogParabola gave the best fit. The result from the SED analysis was integrated with results from previous work done on the source, ranging over multiple wavelengths in order to get a SED which spanned over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Finally, modeling of this multi wavelength SED was performed in order to obtain parameters for the physical processes involved in the creation of the radiation received from PKS 0537-441.

In a magnetized plasma, naturally occurring pressure anisotropies facilitate instabilities that are expected to modify the transport properties of the system. In this thesis we examine two such instabilities and, where appropriate, their effects on transport. First we consider the collisional (fluid) magnetized magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the presence of the Braginskii viscosity. We conduct a global linear analysis of the instability in a galactic rotation profile for three magnetic field configurations: purely azimuthal, purely vertical and slightly pitched. Our analysis, numerical and asymptotic, shows that the first two represent singular configurations where the Braginskii viscosity's primary role is dissipative and the maximum growth rate is proportional to the Reynolds number when this is small. For a weak pitched field, the Braginskii viscosity is destabilising and when its effects dominate over the Lorentz force, the growth rate of the MRI can be up to 2√2 times faster than the inviscid limit. If the field is strong, an over-stability develops and both the real and imaginary parts of the frequency increase with the coefficient of the viscosity. Second, in the context of the ICM of galaxy clusters, we consider the pressure-anisotropy-driven firehose instability. The linear instability is fast (~ ion cyclotron period) and small-scale (ion Larmor radius ρi) and so fluid theory is inapplicable. We determine its nonlinear evolution in an ab initio kinetic calculation (for parallel gradients only). We use a particular physical asymptotic ordering to derive a closed nonlinear equation for the firehose turbulence, which we solve. We find secular (α t) growth of magnetic fluctuations and a k-||3 spectrum, starting at scales >~ ρi. When a parallel ion heat flux is present, the parallel firehose instability mutates into the new gyrothermal instability. Its nonlinear evolution also involves secular magnetic energy growth, but its spectrum is eventually dominated by modes with a maximal scale ~ρilT/λmfp,(lT is the parallel temperature gradient scale). Throughout we discuss implications for modelling, transport and other areas of magnetized plasma physics.

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

Wind turbines are becoming a more common sight and a more important part in the power grid. The benefits are mainly that wind energy is a renewable energy source and a single wind turbine can produce enough electricity to cover several households’ annual electricity need and not producing carbon dioxide as a rest product. Drawbacks are fluctuation in wind speed, which makes it difficult to regulate. The turbines need to be placed far from cities which cause losses in transmission in the national power grid.  In cold areas with long winters there is a risk of high energy losses due to iced blades. If there is ice accretion on the wind turbine blades it can cause a production loss and in extension economical losses by not selling the electricity. Finding those events is of high interest and there are methods to prevent and remove ice. However, there are occasions when there is ice on the blades, but no sensors signal this, and the production loss is a fact. There is a presumed production loss of 5-25 % annually due to icing on wind turbines in Sweden, depending on where the site is located. There is no general method for detecting ice in the industry but there are several methods available developed by different parties.  In this master’s thesis, a software has been developed in cooperation with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy to identify production losses on wind turbines due to icing using historical SCADA data. The software filters the raw data to construct a reference curve, to which data during cold weather is compared. It was found that low temperature causes ice losses, and the risk of an ice loss increases as temperature decreases. The annual losses at investigated wind farms were 4-10 % of the expected annual production. / Vindkraftverk blir en allt vanligare syn och en viktigare del i kraftnätet. Fördelarna är framförallt att det är en förnybar energykälla, det blir inga koldioxidutsläpp när vindkraftverken har installerats och ett vindkraftverk kan täcka flera hushålls årliga elbehov. Nackdelar är att vinden inte går att kontrollera och elproduktionen inte är garanterad eller konstant. Vindkraftverk placeras långt ifrån tätorter, vilket leder till förluster under distribution.  I kalla regioner med långa vintrar uppstår en risk för energiförluster på grund av nedisade turbinblad. Om det finns ispåbyggnad på turbinbladen kan det orsaka produktionsförluster och följaktligen en ekonomisk förlust. Det är av stort intresse i att upptäcka dessa och det finns flera metoder för att förbygga is och även avisning. Det antas vara produktionsförluster på 5-25 % årligen på grund av is i Sverige, beroende på vindparkens placering. Det finns ingen generell metod för att upptäcka is inom industrin, men det finns flera metoder utvecklade av olika parter.  I det här examensarbetet har en mjukvara utvecklats i samarbete med Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy för att upptäcka produktionsförluster hos vindkraftverk orsakade av nedisade turbinblad genom att använda SCADA-data. Mjukvaran filtrerar rådata för att beräkna en referenskurva, mot vilken data för kallt väder kan jämföras. Den visar att det finns korrelation mellan låg temperatur och produktionsförluster samt att risken för produktionsförlust ökar då temperaturen sjunker. De årliga produktionsförlusterna hos de undersökta vindparkerna var 4-10 % av den förväntade årliga produktionen.