Relativistic Astrophysics of Neutron Stars

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Neutron stars and black holes are the most compact astrophysical objects in the universe. Their strong gravitational fields allow us to explore a regime of physics inaccessible in terrestrial experiments and to test theories of gravitational physics. Although black holes are reasonably simple objects to describe, neutron stars are considerably more difficult. This is because they are the densest configurations of matter possible which are stable to gravitational collapse. The density in the central core of a neutron star can be many times more dense than nuclear matter. Since experiments on Earth can't reproduce such high densities, the internal structure of a neutron star is not well understood. In particular, if it were possible to measure the size of a neutron star, it would help us understand the properties of supranuclear density matter. The main focus of this research proposal is a theoretical study of neutron star dynamics with an emphasis on the electromagnetic radiation they produce. Observations of light originating from systems containing neutron stars, such as pulsars, x-ray binaries, magnetars, and short gamma-ray bursters, provide a great wealth of data with which to compare theoretical predictions. The proposed research will involve computational studies of the propagation of light near rapidly rotating neutron stars in order to make theoretical predictions about relativistic effects (such as frame-dragging and gravitational lensing) which may be detectable by present-day and future proposed X-ray telescopes. This work will play an important role in measuring the size and other properties of many neutron stars allowing us to constrain the possible theories of dense nuclear matter which describe the interior of a neutron star.