Masters Thesis

A study of the plasma atmosphere around a magnetized neutron star

In this thesis I use a Lagrangian fluid code to study the plasma atmosphere around an accreting, magnetized neutron star in a high mass x-ray binary. An old version of the code, initially written in FORTRAN, is rewritten in Python using modern algorithms and updated numerical techniques. The code is validated against known analytical solutions of various physical processes relevant to the system. It is then used to numerically time-evolve the system in question in order to study the behavior of a generated shock wave. I explain why I believe the code was unable to achieve this overall goal and elaborate on where future work should be focused in order to resolve the issue.

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