Niels Bohr Institutet > Kalender - det sker på NBI > 2009 > Master thesis defense ...

Master thesis defense by Mike Alexandersen

DARK MSc student Mike Alexandersen will be defending his MSc thesis on Wednesday the 25th November at 15:30 in the Rockefeller Auditorium.

Thesis title: An almost automated search for dust scattered X-ray haloes around gamma-ray bursts using Swift XRT data.

Abstract: I have investigated methods for discovering and locating dust clouds in our Galaxy. This was done using the expanding dust scattered X-ray haloes formed around the afterglow of some gamma-ray bursts. Only five GRBs have previously been known to feature these expanding ring haloes. I used these to create a strategy for searching for this type of halo, which was subsecuently developed into a programme, which does most of the reduction and analysis automatically. Using this programme, 87 GRB observations from the Swift public library were analysed, revealing at least four previously unknown haloes.