Poster abstract details

Modelling the circumstellar disk structures in X-ray Binary systems. It has been shown that an exceptionally large population of massive X-ray binaries exist in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Long-term hard X-ray lightcurves, coupled with long-term optical photometric lightcurves from the OGLE project and the Liverpool and Faulkes telescopes, together with H alpha monitoring with the VLT, provide valuable insights into the size and behaviour of the circumstellar disks. Recent identification of the optical counterparts to the BeX systems in the SMC have enabled multiwaveband data to be included in the interpretation of their behaviour. To date, more than a dozen of these systems have revealed optical outbursts, or binary modulation linked to X-ray phenomena and accretion processes. One excellent example is that of SXP327 which reveals multiple optical brightenings each binary cycle. My project is to provide detailed modelling of the dynamics of the disc in order to interpret observations, and the best approach to use is believed to be Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).