Doctoral Dissertations
Recent Submissions
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Jurković, Monika (, 2019)[more][less]
Abstract: The subject of this PhD thesis are Type II Cepheids. Type II Cepheids are pulsating Population II stars with masses of around 0.5 0.6 M⊙. Their mass determines where they are positioned on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD), that is, their luminosity and eective temperature. These stars can be found in the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and in other distant galaxies. They occupy a narrow strip on the HRD which is called the instability strip. Here the radii and luminosity change periodically, and this change can be seen in the light curves. Because of their age, and their position on the HRD, these variables form a separate period-luminosity relation (PL relation). Using the spectral energy distribution models we determined in this thesis the eective temperatures and luminosities, and from evolutionary models the masses and radii, for Type II Cepheids and anomalous Cepheids in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. In the thesis, the rst period- luminosity relation was constructed using bolometric magnitude (Mbol). The thesis also presents the reclassication of Type II Cepheids from the Milky Way using the Fourier decomposition of the light curves measured in V lter. The Fourier decomposition was used to calculate the Fourier parameters, which were then used to compare the stars from the Milky Way with the sample of known Type II Cepheids and anomalous Cepheids from the OGLE-III catalogue for the Large Magellanic Cloud. From the 59 stars (taken from the General Catalogue of Variable Stars), 18 turned out to be anomalous Cepheids, 1 anomalous Cepheid pulsating in the rst overtone, 11 classical Cepheids, 2 peculiar W Virginis stars or classical Cepheids, and 7 were found not to be pulsating stars at all. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/4760 Files in this item: 1
Jurkovic_Monika.dok.dis.pdf ( 15.79Mb ) -
Pavlović, Marko (, 2017)[more][less]
Abstract: Supernova (SN) explosions disperse the different heavy elements across the Uni- verse. These elements are the building blocks which make up the world around and inside us. Supernova remnants (SNRs) are extraordinary astronomical objects that are also of high scientific interest, because they provide insights into aforementioned supernova explosion mechanisms, and because they are important sources of Galac- tic cosmic rays (CRs). Radio observations are among the oldest means to study these objects. The radio luminosity and spectra of SNRs, especially young ones, requires active acceleration of electrons by the SNR shocks. In this doctoral dissertation, radio evolution of SNRs is investigated by using three-dimensional hydrodynamic modelling and non-linear diffusive shock acceleration of CRs in SNRs. Hydrodynamic simulations, developed and adopted in this dissertation, allow us to explicitly account for the shock modification by CRs. We also include consistent numerical treatment of magnetic field amplification (MFA) due to CR resonant and non-resonant streaming instabilities. We modelled the peculiar nature of radio evo- lution of the youngest known Galactic SNR G1.9+0.3 and concluded that increasing radio emission is a common occurrence among very young SNRs. Our model ena- bled us to make important conclusions about the present and predictions about the future properties of radio emission from this SNR. We also developed more general model of the radio evolution of SNRs, by performing simulations for wide range of the relevant physical parameters, such as the ambient density, the supernova ex- plosion energy, the acceleration efficiency and the MFA efficiency. We confirm the reliability of our radio evolutionary tracks on a observation sample consisting of Galactic and extragalactic SNRs. This dissertation also deals with one of the most important questions surroun- ding our current understanding of the magnetic fields in SNRs. We conclude that equipartition is a justified assumption especially between the CR electrons and the magnetic fields in evolved SNRs, in the Sedov-Taylor phase of evolution. Our work also offers a possible explanation how can equipartition between CRs and magnetic field in the interstellar medium be achieved. Type of modeling, presented in this thesis, is expected to be a useful tool for fu- ture observers working on powerful radio telescopes such as ALMA, MWA, ASKAP, SKA and FAST. Simulations should provide important information about the evolu- tionary stage of the observed SNRs, as well as to characterize the physical conditions in the shocks where the relativistic particles are accelerated. Simulations could help us to predict the science output of future large scale surveys, as well as to explain new, often unexpected results obtained by observations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/4759 Files in this item: 1
MPavlovic.pdf ( 14.32Mb ) -
Ćiprijanović, Aleksandra (, 2016)[more][less]
Abstract: Studying cosmic rays is very important for better understanding of high energy physical processes, since particles accelerated in space can reach energies far above what we can produce in accelerators on Earth, at the moment. Processes that produce cosmic rays are still unexplained to some extent, and models that have been proposed are awaiting confirmation. Presence of cosmic rays can be measured by detecting different products of interactions of these high energy particles with the interstellar medium through which they propagate. This thesis deals with the accretion shock as sources of cosmic rays in clusters of galaxies, as well as cosmic rays accelerated in supernova remnants inside galaxies. No matter which of these mechanisms is being considered, cosmic rays will collide with atoms and ions in the interstellar medium, and produce, among other things, gamma rays, neutrinos, as well as light elements, of which we will discuss lithium. In the thesis we primarily develop models that describe gamma rays produced by cosmic rays accelerated in shocks that can appear in different processes. We first examine accretion of new gas onto already virialized structures (for example in galaxy clusters). For the first time, we include the change of gamma-ray pro- duction with time, through the history of the universe, that reflects the evolution of accretion shocks which appear during large scale structure formation. Therefore, the models developed in this thesis describe the gamma rays from large scale struc- tures more realistically, compared to models which have previously been developed and which use single redshift approximation for the gamma-ray origin. Models are used to derive the gamma-ray flux of all unresolved galaxy clusters. These mode- led gamma rays are then compared to the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background, measured by telescope Fermi-LAT. This leads to the conclusion that these cosmic rays have non-negligible contribution to the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background (depending on the normalization, they can even explain the whole isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background) and that this population of cosmic rays has to be taken into consideration in addition to other components that are thought to be major contributors, like for example, unresolved normal galaxies or blazars. In the thesis, models of gamma-ray production in accretion shocks are also com- pared to observations of high-energy neutrinos detected by IceCube detector. Neu- trinos are used to normalize gamma-ray models, from which we conclude that if the accretion shocks are predominantly strong, neutrino background is more limiting to the possible gamma-ray emissivity of these objects, compared to the gamma-ray background we first used. Study of neutrinos as products of cosmic-ray interactions is very important, since neutrinos interact weakly with other particles, and therefore keep all of the information about the time they were produced and about cosmic rays that produced them. One part of the thesis deals with the production of cosmic rays in supernova remnants, in particular, the case of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which was detected in gamma rays. In this galaxy we also have the first measurements of the lithium abundances in the interstellar gas outside of the Milky Way. Since gamma rays and lithium are produced through interactions of cosmic rays with the interstellar medium, their same origin can be used to estimate the production of lithium and gamma rays by any cosmic-ray population. We show that galactic cosmic rays, which are considered to be dominant population of cosmic rays in the Small Magellanic Cloud, can only explain a very small part of the observed abundance of lithium, if we assume that the entire present gamma-ray emissivity that we observe also originates from the interaction of galactic cosmic rays with gas within the galaxy. This conclusion is interesting, because it leads to the possible existence of other sources of lithium in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Also, using the fact that gamma rays and lithium share the same origin, we estimate how much can irregular dwarf galaxies contribute to the diffuse gamma-ray background. Study of several different products of cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar medium (gamma rays, neutrinos and lithium) on smaller scales (within the galaxy), as well as on the largest scales (galaxy clusters), showed that in addition to the galactic cosmic rays accelerated in supernova remnants, other still hypothetical co- smic rays (produced for example during accretion of gas on largest scales, or tidal interactions of galaxies) can have a non-negligible contribution to the measurements. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/4758 Files in this item: 1
AleksandraCiprijanovic.pdf ( 29.40Mb ) -
Milić, Ivan (, 2014)[more][less]
Abstract: Multidimensional radiative transfer is an essential ingredient of modern ap- proach to modeling of astrophysical objects. Realistic modeling calls for the as- sumption of non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE), which, in turn requires self-consistent solution of coupled equations of radiative transfer statistical equilib- rium. This approach allows us to compute emergent spectrum from a given model of the object, which is, in principle, a necessary step in interpretation of observational results. Thanks to the high-resolution and high signal to noise observations, it is often possible to measure not only intensity of the light but also its state of po- larization. For interpretation of such observations it is necessary to solve radiative transfer problem for polarized radiation. This thesis deals with non-LTE transfer of (generally polarized) radiation in two- dimensional media. Thesis can be divided in two parts. In the first part, we present a numerical method for the formal solution of the radiative transfer equation in 2D Cartesian coordinate system. This method allows us to explicitly account for the contribution of non-local source functions to the local specific intensity, and, hence, to the local scattering integral. The knowledge of these contributions is necessary for an iterative solution of coupled equations of radiative transfer and statistical equilibrium. Based on this formal solution we introduce two novel schemes for multidimensional NLTE radiative transfer which have so far been used only in 1D geometry: symmetric Gauss-Seidel iteration and “Sweep-by-sweep” implicit lambda iteration, latter one being based on “Forth-and-back” implicit lambda iteration. Both methods utilize implicit use of the local source function and the source func- tion corrections each sweep of the computational grid (four times per iteration). “Sweep-by-sweep” implicit lambda iteration also uses the idea of iteration factors and achieves acceleration of about factor of seven with respect to the referent Ja- cobi method. Both new methods also significantly surpass both Jacobi iteration and Gauss-Seidel iteration on problems with periodic boundary conditions. Also, it turns out that “Sweep-by-sweep” implicit lambda iteration scales with grid resolu- tion better than the Jacobi iteration. The second part of the thesis deals with numerical polarized radiative transfer on 2D cylindrical grids. The method is based on the second order short characteristics for the formal solution and uses standard Jacobi iteration with Ng acceleration to solve the polarized non-LTE problem (Generalization to other iterative schemes is given in appendix A). This method allows for the self-consistent solution of coupled equations of radiative transfer and statistical equilibrium equation for a two level atom model for polarized radiation. The method employs reduced intensity basis where intensity and source function are written as six-vectors and source function does not depend on direction which allows for significant saving in memory and computing time. It is applicable for modeling of axisymmetric objects such as as- trophysical disks. The method has been tested on simple models of circumstellar and self-emitting disks. The most important conclusion of these computations is that the presence of the disk in the system introduces a significant degree of linear polarization due to the scattering processes and that one is able to model it in detail using our approach. Also, it is shown that the presence of rotation in self-emitting disks dramatically changes not only intensity, but also polarized spectral lines pro- files. Interplay of non-LTE, multidimensional effects and rotation results in very complicated line profiles which are non-trivial for interpretation. However, the main effect is that the rotation decreases the amount of Stokes Q component and, de- pending on the rotation velocity causes appearance of double-lobed U polarization profile. If these effects can be observed, this kind of modeling provides a useful tool for interpretation of the spectropolarimetric observations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/4757 Files in this item: 1
IvanMilic_teza.pdf ( 1.075Mb ) -
Manojlović, Vesna (Beograd , 2008)[more][less]