X-Ray Emission from the Pulsar B1929+10
Open Access
- Author:
- Brown, Grayce
- Area of Honors:
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- George Pavlov, Thesis Supervisor
Jane Camilla Charlton, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Astronomy
Astrophysics
Pulsars
Neutron stars
X-ray - Abstract:
- Pulsars are created by the violent death of a massive star. During a supernova event, the core of the star compresses into a quickly spinning and incredibly dense body called a neutron star. The extreme conditions in and around the star generate beams of radiation that sweep around as the star rotates. We call these objects pulsars because of the way they appear to pulsate if the beams sweep in Earth’s direction. PSR B1929+10 is one of the closest pulsars to Earth and can consequently be studied in detail in various energy ranges. It is relatively old at about 3 million years and is known to be surrounded by a bow-shock pulsar wind nebula with a long tail. Past research has mostly focused on this nebula, while the emission mechanisms from pulsar itself has been a subject of debate. In this thesis, I report on spectral and timing analysis of archival data from the XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory. I find that the pulsar's X-ray spectrum can be best described with an absorbed power law and blackbody radiation model, where non-thermal emission from the pulsar's magnetosphere is modeled by a power law of photon index 2.1 +/- 0.2 and thermal emission from the neutron star's surface is modeled by a blackbody radiation component with temperature 0.28 +/- 0.01 keV. I also find that thermal emission accounts for ~35% of the total luminosity in the 0.3--6.0 keV energy range. However, more research is needed to confirm these results.