Magnetospheres & surface heating
Deriving physical hotspot maps from current flow in displaced and multipolar magnetic fields.
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Ph.D. candidate in Physics
Chun Huang
I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, advised by Alexander Y. Chen.
I study how pulsar magnetospheres produce X-ray hotspots, and how pulse-profile and multimessenger observations can constrain neutron-star radii and dense matter.
I am seeking postdoctoral positions beginning in 2027.
Research
An outside-in approach to neutron stars
Interactive forward model
From an off-center dipole to an X-ray pulse
Change the magnetic obliquity or move the dipole inside the star. The physics-motivated surface-heating map and its relativistic light curve are recomputed together.
Compactness 0.345
Pulsed fraction —
Heated surface —
The surface map ports the off-center-dipole current prescription used in Huang & Chen (2025): open-field current is evaluated across the star and converted to a temperature proxy. The light curve integrates that nonuniform map with Schwarzschild light bending and Doppler boosting. This browser calculation uses generic parameters and is not an observational fit; the research pipeline additionally includes atmosphere spectra, exact ray-tracing tables, oblateness, time delays, and detector response.
Selected work