A supernova explosion of a massive star at the end of its life leaves behind a compact object, either a black hole or a neutron star. We study a particular aspect of neutron stars in this project. A neutron star is a fast spinning, extremely dense object with a strong magnetic field. Neutron stars can emit lightbeams from their magnetic poles. For an observer on earth these beams appear as pulses of light. These pulses of light are practically the only way to gather information about neutron stars. We use a model of a neutron star showing how the pulses of radiation would appear from Earth based on a set of chosen parameter values. These parameters contain information regarding the geometry of the neutron star, its mass and radius, as well as some properties related to the way the radiation is emitted. We also use a particle swarm optimization method to fit the simulated pulse to the observed light pulse of the x-ray emitting Centaurus X-3 (Cen X-3) binary system. This is done In order to retrieve information about Cen X-3. Our resulting fits do not converge to a single solution, rather it shows that there are many possible configurations leading to the observed light pulses. This shows that while our model can be used to simulate the behavior of neutron stars it requires further development if one wishes to obtain reliable parameter estimates.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-349004 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Avdic, Amer, Mjörnheim, Alfred |
| Publisher | KTH, Skolan för teknikvetenskap (SCI) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | TRITA-SCI-GRU ; 2024:134 |
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