Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

Just as correlations between fluctuating radial and azimuthal velocities produce a coherent stress contributing to the angular momentum transport in turbulent accretion disks, correlations in the velocity and temperature fluctuations produce a coherent energy flux. This nonadvective thermal energy flux is always of secondary importance in thin radiative disks, but cannot be neglected in nonradiative flows, in which it completes the mean field description of turbulence. It is nevertheless generally ignored in accretion flow theory, with the exception of models explicitly driven by thermal convection, for which it is modeled phenomenologically. This flux embodies both turbulent thermal convection and wave transport, and its presence is essential for a proper formulation of energy conservation, whether convection is present or not. The sign of the thermal flux is likely to be outward in real systems, but the restrictive assumptions used in numerical simulations may lead to inward thermal transport, in which case qualitatively new effects may be exhibited. We find, for example, that a static solution would require inward, not outward, thermal transport. Even if it were present, thermal convection would be unlikely to stifle accretion but would simply add to the outward rotational energy flux that must already be present.

Abstract:

Studies of the knotty jets in both quasars and microquasars frequently make use of the ratio of the intensities of corresponding knots on opposite sides of the nucleus in order to infer the product of the intrinsic jet speed (beta) and the cosine of the inclination angle of the jet-axis (cos{theta}), via the formalism I_{a}/I_{r} = ((1+beta cos{theta})/(1-beta cos{theta}))^{3+alpha}, where alpha relates the intensity I_{nu} as a function of frequency nu as I_{nu} propto nu^{-alpha}. Where beta cos{theta} is determined independently, the intensity ratio of a given pair of jet to counter-jet knots is over-predicted by the above formalism compared with the intensity ratio actually measured from radio images. As an example in the case of Cygnus X-3 the original formalism predicts an intensity ratio of about 185, whereas the observed intensity ratio at one single epoch is about 3. Mirabel and Rodriguez (1999) have refined the original formalism, and suggested measuring the intensity ratio of knots when they are at equal angular separations from the nucleus. This method is only applicable where there is sufficient time-sampling with sufficient physical resolution to interpolate the intensities of the knots at equal distances from the nucleus, and can therefore be difficult to apply to microquasars and is impossible to apply to quasars. Accounting for both the light-travel time between the knots and the simple evolution of the knots themselves reconciles this over-prediction and renders the original formalism obsolete.

Abstract:

We present early results from the first near-IR imaging of the weak X-ray sources discovered in the recent Chandra/ACIS-I survey towards the Galactic Centre (GC) (Wang et al. 2002). These ̃800 discrete sources, which contribute significantly to the GC X-ray emission, represent an important and previously unknown population within the Galaxy. From our VLT observations we will identify likely IR counterparts to a sample of the hardest sources, which are most likely X-ray binaries. With these data we can place constraints on the nature of the discrete weak X-ray source population of the GC. Once the data analysis is complete we will discuss our results in the context of binary population synthesis models. © Copyright 2004: IA, UNAM.