Pulse Profile Decompositions

It is generally believed that the emission of accreting X-ray pulsars comes mostly from the two magnetic poles of the neutron star. However, we only see a mix of both poles and can even see emission from both poles at the same time due to gravitational light bending, reflection, beaming… 

In order to model and understand these objects though, we need to understand which part of the emission comes from which pole. Here, we introduce a new method to decompose pulse profiles and present first results of Cen X-3.