My Research Interests
My current research involves phenomenological study of X-ray emissions from X-ray Binary Pulsars. I work on temporal and spectroscopic characteristics from cosmic X-ray sources to model the emission mechanism from these sources.
Study of Binary Environment in HMXB
Strong Iron Kα alpha emission line are ubiquitous in HMXB. The near neutral iron fluorescent line originates from reprocession of the NS X-ray emission by the wider binary environment. A phase resolved analysis of the iron fluorescent emission can be used to study the geometry of the stellar wind environment.
Study of Magnetic Fields
In high magnetic field High Mass X-ray Binary Pulsars, the plasma near the magnetic poles of NS quantize the energy of particles in corresponding Landau levels. The resulting particle photon interactions results in absorption like feature in the NS spectrum. The absorption feature gives a direct measurement of magnetic field strength. The variation of the cyclotron line can be used as a trace of magnetic field structure of the NS.
POLIX: Polarimeter in X-rays
Polarization measurement is the next frontier in the field of observational X-ray astrophysics. POLIX is the primary payload in the upcoming ISRO mission XPoSat. POLIX works in the energy range of 8-30 keV. The main observational goal of the instrument is to measure the polarization of accretion-powered pulsars, which are expected to be almost 80% polarized.
Pulsar monitoring using DAKSHA
DAKSHA is a proposed all-sky X-ray monitor to detect high energy burst from explosive astrophysical objects. With 2 complementary satellites, the coverage of the instrument spans almost the entire sky. My project was to use this all-sky coverage to monitor the spin evolution of persistent pulsar as well as quick detection of a transient pulsars undergoing outburst.
