Author ORCID Identifier
Degree Year
2018
Document Type
Thesis - Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Physics and Astronomy
Advisor(s)
D.R. Stinebring
Keywords
Pulsars, Pulsar timing arrays, Scintillation, Interferometry, Interstellar medium, Dispersion, Radio astronomy, Simulation
Abstract
In this thesis, I discuss the creation of a simulation that attempts to reconstruct secondary spectra of pulsars by simulating the scattering in the interstellar medium. For the simulation, we focus on two distinct scattering phenomena, namely a coherent deflection at grazing incidence along a sheet of material, and a random deflection due to a random-walk type process through clouds of material. The simulation focuses on a representation known as a Wavefield Representation that our group has not utilized to this extent before, and it allowed us to understand the physics behind these scattering events in new depths. The final product allows us to explore a number of unique scenarios involving random scattering as well as coherent screens, which is extremely interesting and potentially beneficial to our work. Going forward, we intend to expand the versatility of the simulation to try to fully reconstruct spectra like ones that we observed in our work on the Green Bank Telescope Scintarc Survey that my partner Lele Mathis and I conducted together.
Repository Citation
Jussila, Adam P., "Simulating Pulsar Signal Scattering in the Interstellar Medium with Two Distinct Scattering Phenomena" (2018). Honors Papers. 161.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors/161
