PhD Tesis defense

On the 3rd of July, at 12:00 , in the seminar of the department Astronomia i Astrofísica, Burjassot, will take place the PhD thesis defense of Petros Stefanou, that has been supervised by José Pons and Pablo Cerdá.

Abstract:

The central theme of this thesis is the study of force-free (FF) configurations of the magnetic field in neutron star magnetospheres. It deals with numerical solutions of non-zero helicity (twisted magnetospheres) in 3D, with particularisation to the case of magnetars, and using a finite-difference numerical scheme implementing the Grad-Rubin method. Furthermore, the applicability of new numerical methods based on neural networks, called PINNs (Physics-Informed Neural Networks), is explored on magnetospheres of magnetars for the axisymmetric case. Finally, the use of PINNs is extended to the more complex problem of asymmetric pulsar magnetospheres, where rotation effects, which are neglected for magnetars, are important. This thesis provides a brief introduction to neutron stars and their magnetospheres, explains the methodology applied to each problem, presents the most important results obtained and concludes with some final remarks.