Research Interests
My research interests lie in three strongly linked aspects:
1) pulsar timing;
2) pulsar/binary emission mechanisms;
3) gravitational waves.
Pulsar timing
The basic idea of pulsar timing is to measure the time of arrival of every pulse from the pulsar, and to find out how the intervals between successive pulses vary from time to time. Since pulsars are very stable tick-tocking clocks, the variation is tiny.
There are a lot of things which can give rise to these tiny variation of the pulses arrival time. In other words, pulsar timing can be used as a probe to study many aspects in physics and astrophysics (see my Ph.D thesis for a review). For instances, the evolution of the magnetic field of neutron stars (Yi & Zhang, 2015), and the gravitational waves passing between the Earth and pulsars (Yi et al. 2014).
Pulsar emission mechanism
Pulsars are not only excellent tools, they are also sources of multiband electromagnetic radiation. Particularly, pulsars emit relativistic electrons/protons, known as the pulsar wind, which interact with the surrounding materials to give high energy radiation, as in pulsar nebulae and pulsar binaries (Yi & Cheng, 2017 a & b).
click here for a full PDF version Research Statement.
Gravitational waves
Gravitational waves (GW) are propagating ripples on the spacetime manifold itself. With the recent detections by LIGO, GW became the newly opened channel in astronomy. I'm also very interested in researches on GW related topics. Besides pulsar timing GW detection (Yi et al. 2014, Yi & Zhang, 2016), I have also studied on the possibility of GW Cherenkov radiation (Yi 2017).
Publication List
Published or Accepted for publication by peer reviewed Journals
Shu-Xu Yi, K. S. Cheng, Ronald E. Taam; The growth of stellar mass black hole binaries trapped in an accretion disk of active galactic nuclei, ApjL,2018,859,25. ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, K. S. Cheng; On the timing behavior of PSR B1259-63 under the propeller torque from a transient accretion disc, MNRAS,2018,476,766. ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, K. S. Cheng; Probing the properties of the pulsar wind via studying the dispersive effects in the pulses from the pulsar companion in a double neutron-star binary system, MNRAS,2017,472,4007. ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, K. S. Cheng; Modeling the GeV emission of HESS J0632+057, MNRAS, Volume 471, Issue 4, p.4228-4233, 2017. ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, K. S. Cheng; A new approach to the GeV flare of PSR B1259-63/LS2883, ApJ, Volumn 844, Issue 2, article id. 114, 8 pp, 2017. ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi; On gravitational wave-Cherenkov radiation from photons when passing through diffused dark matters, Modern Physics Letters A, Volume 32, Issue 9, 2017 ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, Shuang-Nan Zhang; Detecting super-Nyquist-frequency gravitational waves using a pulsar timing array, Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, Volume 59, Issue 8, 2016. ADS Link
Xu-Dong Gao, Shuang-Nan Zhang, Shu-Xu Yi, Yi Xie, Jian-Ning Fu; Understanding the residual patterns of timing solutions of radio pulsars with a model of magnetic field oscillation, MNRAS, 2016, Volume 459, Issue 1, p.402-418 ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, Shuang-Nan Zhang; The evolution of the magnetic inclination angle as an explanation of the long term red timing-noise of pulsars, MNRAS, 2015, Volume 454, Issue 4, p.3674-3678 ADS Link
Yu Rong, Shu-Xu YI, Shuang-Nan Zhang, Radial alignment of elliptical galaxies by the tidal force of a cluster of galaxies, MNRAS, 2015, Volume 451, Issue 3, p.2536-2543, ADS Link
Shan-shan Weng, Shuang-Nan Zhang, Shu-Xu Yi, Yu Rong, Xu-Dong Gao; X-ray softening during the 2008 outburst of XTE J1810-189, MNRAS,2015, Volume 450, Issue 3, p.2915-2921 ADS Link
Shu-Xu Yi, Benjamin Stappers, Sotiris Sanidas, Cees Bassa, Gemma Janssen, Andrew Lyne, Micheal Kramer, Shuang-Nan Zhang; Limits on the strength of individual gravitational wave sources using high-cadence observations of PSR B1937+21, MNRAS, 2015, Volume 445 ADS Link
Other publications
Shuang-Nan Zhang, Yuan Liu, Shu-Xu Yi, Zigao Dai, Chao-guang Huang, Do we expect to detect electromagnetic radiation from merging stellar mass black binaries like GW150914? No Arxiv Link
Shuang-Nan Zhang, Shu-Xu Yi, On a Common Misunderstanding of the Birkhoff Theorem and Light Deflection Calculation: Generalized Shapiro Delay and its Possible Laboratory Test, International Journal of Modern Physics: Conference Series, Volume 12, pp. 419-430 (2012). ADS Link