Neutron stars in mass-transferring binaries accrete hydrogen and helium rich matter from their companions. Unstable nuclear burning of this matter results in Type I X-ray bursts every few hours to days. Theoretical models propose three regimes of unstable burning on neutron star surfaces and also define the critical accretion rate above which the neutron star burns fuel stably without bursting. Currently, the theoretical value for this stability boundary is comparable to the Eddington limit whereas the observational limit is estimated to 0.3 m˙Edd. In this dissertation, we examine the boundary between stable and unstable thermonuclear burning at the surface of an accreting neutron star for a range of initial compositions. We compute different steady-state equilibrium models and use them to conduct a linear perturbation analysis. The main results of this analysis are plots of the critical accretion rates as a function of the initial helium mass fraction which were never produced before.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.101872 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Niquette, Caroline. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | © Caroline Niquette, 2007 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002666580, proquestno: AAIMR38424, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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