Aspects of gravitation in astrophysics
Subtitle: from accretion disks to quantum astronomy
By: Fabrizio Tamburini.
Publisher: University of Portsmouth, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Portsmouth
Language: eng
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Portsmouth, 2002?.
Table of contents: title: Contents; title: Chapter 1 Introduction to Accretion disk Astronomy; title: 1.1 Accretion disk theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1; title: 1.1.1 Historical perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1; title: 1.2 The physics of accretion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9; title: 1.2.1 Observational evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9; title: 1.2.2 The Eddington limit and spherical accretion. . . . . . . 14; title: 1.2.3 The Roche Lobe overflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15; title: 1.2.4 An example: Cataclysmic Variable Stars . . . . . . . . 19; title: 1.3 The equations of motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23; title: 1.3.1 The problem of viscosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24; title: 1.3.2 Fluctuations and structure formation: . . . . . . . . . . 27; title: 1.3.3 Fluctuation dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30; title: 1.4 Accretion disks in binary systems:; title: the effect of tides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32; title: 1.5 The Jacobi coordinate system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35; title: 1.6 Hill’s lunar theory and parametric resonances . . . . . . . . . 37; title: 1.7 Orbital stability of a fluid stream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43; title: 1.7.1 Tidal truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43; title: 1.7.2 Orbital resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48; title: 1.8 Conclusions to Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53; title: Chapter 2 Floquet analysis and hydrodynamic stability in tidally distorted accretion disks; title: 2.1 The Parameter Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63; title: 2.2 Fourier-mode hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64; title: 2.3 Floquet stability analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67; title: 2.4 Fiducial binary systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67; title: 2.5 Time evolution of perturbations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69; title: 2.6 Classes of disk resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75; title: 2.6.1 Orbital Resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76; title: 2.6.2 Radial-mode stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85; title: 2.7 Three dimensional Floquet Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89; title: 2.7.1 Numerical accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97; title: 2.8 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97; title: Chapter 3 Intermediate Polars: Observations and analysis of RW Umi Disk instabilities; title: 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105; title: 3.2 Accretion driven by Magnetic Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107; title: 3.3 The intermediate polar RW UMi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109; title: 3.4 Observations and analysis of RW Umi instabilities . . . . . . . 111; title: 3.5 The observations and data reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112; title: 3.5.1 WIRO observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114; title: 3.5.2 Ekar observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117; title: 3.6 Observations: Implications and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117; title: 3.6.1 The photometric periods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117; title: 3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127; title: 3.7.1 The long term light curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127; title: 3.7.2 Physical parameters of the binary . . . . . . . . . . . . 132; title: 3.7.3 Superhumps and the orbital period . . . . . . . . . . . 132; title: 3.7.4 The suborbital photometric periods . . . . . . . . . . 134; title: 3.7.5 Pre-nova and post-nova state of RW UMi . . . . . . . . 139; title: Chapter 4 Spectropolarimetry of AB Aurigae; title: 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141; title: 4.2 Ae-Be Herbig stars AB Aurigae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141; title: 4.2.1 Morphological aspects of spectral line profiles . . . . . 143; title: 4.3 Observations and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147; title: 4.4 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149; title: 4.5 Data reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150; title: 4.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154; title: 4.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159; title: Chapter 5 Polarization of light from Extrasolar planetary systems; title: 5.1 Dust disks and polarization properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162; title: 5.2 Statistical polarization properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164; title: 5.3 Is polarization due to interstellar medium? . . . . . . . . . . . 165; title: 5.4 Polarization of extrasolar systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167; title: 5.5 Multiple systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174; title: 5.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175; title: Chapter 6 Quantum mechanics-based Astronomical Detectors; title: 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178; title: 6.2 Quantum Astronomical Detectors QuADs . . . . . . . . . . . 178; title: 6.3 From QuADs to QUEST detectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181; title: 6.4 QUantum Entangled STates detector; title: for Gravitational Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184; title: 6.5 Gravitational Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186; title: 6.5.1 The weak-field approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187; title: 6.5.2 Plane waves and TT gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190; title: 6.5.3 Energy-momentum propagation and Quadrupole radiation192; title: 6.5.4 The detection of a GW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193; title: 6.5.5 Sources of GWs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196; title: 6.6 The QUEST-GW detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200; title: 6.6.1 Bell’s and CHSH inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206; title: 6.6.2 High frequency GW setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210; title: 6.6.3 Noise estimation and multi-state entanglement . . . . . 211; title: 6.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214; title: Appendix to Chapter 2; title: 7.1 Inviscid vortices and Euler equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234; title: 7.1.1 Differential rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239; title: 7.1.2 The local Fluid Equations and the Shearing sheet approximation; title: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241; title: 7.1.3 Fluid equations in the pseudo-Cartesian coordinates . . 246; title: Appendix to Chapter 5; title: 8.1 The new polarimeter of the Asiago Observatory . . . . . . . . 249; title: 9 Appendix to Chapter 7; title: 9.1 Parametric Downconversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253; title: 9.2 Physical and Astronomical Constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256; title: 10 Addendum to Chapter 3; title: 10.1 RW UMi updated tables of observations . . . . . . . . . . . . 257