Polarized Curvature Radiation in Pulsar Magnetosphere

The propagation of polarized emission in pulsar magnetosphere is investigated in this paper. The polarized waves are generated through curvature radiation from the relativistic particles streaming along curved magnetic field lines and co-rotating with the pulsar magnetosphere. Within the 1/{\deg} emission cone, the waves can be divided into two natural wave mode components, the ordinary (O) mode and the extraord nary (X) mode, with comparable intensities. Both components propagate separately in magnetosphere, and are aligned within the cone by adiabatic walking. The refraction of O-mode makes the two components separated and incoherent. The detectable emission at a given height and a given rotation phase consists of incoherent X-mode and O-mode components coming from discrete emission regions. For four particle-density models in the form of uniformity, cone, core and patches, we calculate the intensities for each mode numerically within the entire pulsar beam. If the co-rotation of relativistic particles with magnetosphere is not considered, the intensity distributions for the X-mode and O-mode components are quite similar within the pulsar beam, which causes serious depolarization. However, if the co-rotation of relativistic particles is considered, the intensity distributions of the two modes are very different, and the net polarization of out-coming emission should be significant. Our numerical results are compared with observations, and can naturally explain the orthogonal polarization modes of some pulsars. Strong linear polarizations of some parts of pulsar profile can be reproduced by curvature radiation and subsequent propagation effect.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Birthrates and delay times of Type Ia supernovae

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play an important role in diverse areas of astrophysics, from the chemical evolution of galaxies to observational cosmology. However, the nature of the progenitors of SNe Ia is still unclear. In this paper, according to a detailed binary population synthesis study, we obtained SN Ia birthrates and delay times from different progenitor models, and compared them with observations. We find that the Galactic SN Ia birthrate from the double-degenerate (DD) model is close to those inferred from observations, while the birthrate from the single-degenerate (SD) model accounts for only about 1/2-2/3 of the observations. If a single starburst is assumed, the distribution of the delay times of SNe Ia from the SD model is a weak bimodality, where the WD + He channel contributes to the SNe Ia with delay times shorter than 100Myr, and the WD + MS and WD + RG channels to those with age longer than 1Gyr.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Science in China Series G (Dec.30, 2009

The triple degenerate star WD1704+481

WD1704+481 is a visual binary in which both components are white dwarfs. We present spectra of the H-alpha line of both stars which show that one component (WD1704+481.2 = Sanduleak B = GR 577) is a close binary with two white dwarf components. Thus, WD1704+481 is the first known triple degenerate star. From radial velocity measurements of the close binary we find an orbital period of 0.1448d, a mass ratio, q=Mbright/Mfaint of q=0.70+-0.03 and a difference in the gravitational redshifts of 11.5+-2.3km/s. The masses of the close pair of white dwarfs predicted by the mass ratio and gravitational redshift difference combined with theoretical cooling curves are 0.39+-0.05 solar mass and 0.56+-0.07 solar masses. WD1704+481 is therefore also likely to be the first example of a double degenerate in which the less massive white dwarf is composed of helium and the other white dwarf is composed of carbon and oxygen.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Colloidal Electrostatic Interactions Near a Conducting Surface

Charge-stabilized colloidal spheres dispersed in deionized water are supposed to repel each other. Instead, artifact-corrected video microscopy measurements reveal an anomalous long-ranged like-charge attraction in the interparticle pair potential when the spheres are confined to a layer by even a single charged glass surface. These attractions can be masked by electrostatic repulsions at low ionic strengths. Coating the bounding surfaces with a conducting gold layer suppresses the attraction. These observations suggest a possible mechanism for confinement-induced attractions.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Binary coalescence from case A evolution -- mergers and blue stragglers

We constructed some main-sequence mergers from case A binary evolution and studied their characteristics via Eggleton's stellar evolution code. Both total mass and orbital angular momentum are conservative in our binary evolutions. Some mergers might be on the left of the ZAMS as defined by normal surface composition on a CMD because of enhanced surface helium content. The study also shows that central hydrogen content of the mergers is independent of mass. As a consequence, we fit the formula of magnitude and B-V of the mergers when they return back to thermal equilibrium with maximum error 0.29 and 0.037, respectively. Employing the consequences above, we performed Monte Carlo simulations to examine our models in NGC 2682 and NGC 2660. In NGC 2682, binary mergers from our models cover the region with high luminosity, but its importance is much less than that of AML. Our results are well-matched to the observations of NGC2660 if there is about 0.5Mo of mass loss in the merger process.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures. accepted by MNRA