The astrophysics of accretion in compact binaries

与我们的太阳不同，大多数恒星发现自己处于被称为双星的引力约束对中。两颗恒星之间的相互作用经常导致形成一对致密的恒星，其中质量较低的施主恒星失去质量，进入质量较大的初级恒星。当释放的势能被转化为辐射和热量时，这种相互作用可以产生非常高能量的物体。最极端的例子包括一颗非常小但质量很大的恒星残骸，对于质量相当于太阳的恒星来说，它可能是一颗白矮星，对于质量更大的恒星来说，它可能是中子星或黑洞。这两颗恒星可以在短短几分钟内绕对方运行一圈。我建议采用新的成像技术，这与医院使用的CAT扫描方法非常相似，以便使用最新的望远镜和仪器来研究这种相互作用。这使我们能够重建图像，甚至是电影，详细地展示这种相互作用，尽管事实是，即使是我们最大的望远镜也无法分辨这种双星。我将使用这些重建的双星图像来研究这些系统中发生的各种物理过程。其中包括湍流、潮汐相互作用、外流和喷流、黑洞附近的相对论物理以及极端条件下的物质结构。我的工作依赖于利用最新的一套地面望远镜，并结合在地球上无法访问的波长进行空间观测。为了确定双星如何影响我们银河系等星系中的恒星数量，我还打算使用连接在大型望远镜上的广域数码相机来搜索许多新的系统。这一组合将使我能够测试我们目前关于广泛的双星系统的形成、结构和时间演化的想法。

Unlike our Sun, the majority of stars find themselves in gravitationally bound pairs known as binary stars. The interaction between the two stars often leads to the formation of a compact pair with the lower mass donor star losing mass onto the more massive primary. Such interactions can produce very energetic objects as the potential energy that is released is converted into radiation and heat. The most extreme examples contain a very small but massive remnant of a star, which can be either a white dwarf for a star the mass of our Sun, or a neutron star or black hole for more massive stars. These two stars can orbit around each other in as little as a few minutes. I propose to employ novel imaging techniques, which are very similar to the CAT scanning methods used in hospitals, in order to study this interaction using the latest telescopes and instruments. This allows us to reconstruct images and even movies that show this interaction in detail despite the fact that such double stars are not resolved in even our biggest telescopes. I will use these reconstructed images of binaries to study the wide variety of physical processes that occur in these systems. These include turbulence, tidal interactions, outflows and jets, relativistic physics near black holes and the structure of matter under extreme conditions. My work relies on exploiting the latest suite of ground-based telescopes in conjunction with space-based observations at wavelengths that are not accessible from earth. In order to determine how binaries affect the populations of stars in galaxies such as our Milky Way, I also intend to search for many new systems using wide-field digital cameras attached to large telescopes. This combination will allow me to test our current ideas concerning the formation, structure and time evolution of a wide range of binary systems.