Here, at University of Florida, we look at many different aspects of neutron stars and pulsars
to answer questions not only about these bizarre objects but also about cosmic rays, particle acceleration,
compact binary physics, supernova remnants, and the population
of Galactic X-ray sources (including black holes, microquasars, X-ray binaries).
Neutron stars are collapsed star whose surfaces are hot enough to emit radiation in ultraviolet and X-rays.
In addition many neutron stars manifest themselves as pulsars - objects that emit short intense bursts of radio waves, x-rays
,or visible electromagnetic radiation
at regular intervals. Due to the extreme conditions in the neutron star interiors, these objects can be used
as natural laboratories for studying the poorly understood properties of the superdense,
strongly magnetized, superconducting matter. Such conditions can never be reproduced in
Earth laboratories and therefore studying neutron stars provides the only way to learn about
the nuclear reactions and interactions of the elementary particles under these extreme conditions. This information is of fundamental importance for particle and quantum field physics.
Studying pulsar winds allows one to understand the complicated PWN morphologies, elucidate the dynamics of relativistic magnetized outflows and their interaction with the ambient
medium, and learn about particle acceleration in the relativistic shock waves. X-ray and
optical observations of neutron stars provide valuable diagnostics of all these processes.
Some of the Current Research Areas:
- Pulsars winds and pulsar-wind nebulae;
- Thermal emission from neutron stars;
- Extended TeV sources and pulsar winds;
- Interaction processes in tight relativiestic binaries;
- Modeling of relativistic magnetized outflows;
- Searching galactic surveys for compact objects;
- Finding nearby, relic neutron stars and isolated black holes.
We have multi-university, international team:
- Oleg Kargaltsev, University of Florida, US
- George Pavlov, Pennsylvania State University, US
- Zdenka Misanovic, Monash University, Australia
- Sangwook Park , Pennsylvania State University, US
- Koji Mori, University of Miyazaki, Japan
- Gordon Garmire, Pennsylvania State University, US
Our group also includes several graduate and undergradue student working on various
project at Penn State University. We welcome new students and postdocs willing to work in this exiting area.
Our research is supported by vigorous observing program carried out on nearly all major space observatories (Chandra,
XMM-Newton, Suzaku, HST, Spitzer) and the
Very Large Array (New Mexico). Dr. Kargaltsev is also a member of VERITAS and International X-ray Observatory (IXO; former Constellation-X) science panels.
Find out more:
Recent Developments and Selected Recent Publications
- September 2008 - Oleg Kargaltsev and his collaborators discovered extremely long (>7 pc) tails behind two fast moving pulsars Read the Article
- September 2008 - We found an optical counterpart to the old, and possibly closest
to the Earth pulsar J0108-1431 Read the Article
- August 2008 - Our large (320 ks) program "The unique dynamical Vela pulsar-wind nebula" has beed accepted for Chandra AO-10!
- Febraury 2008 - Our review article on Pulsar-Wind Nebulae Read the Article
- August 2007 - We detected X-ray emission from planetary pulsar B1257+12. But why it is so dim? Read the Article
The web page is maintained by Oleg Kargaltsev. Report questions, problems and broken links
to (oyk100 at astro.ufl.edu).
Last revision: October 2008
