Thermonuclear burning in the matter accumulated on the surface of an accreting neutron star is unstable under certain conditions, which leads to powerful explosions also called Type I X-ray bursts.
This book covers the theory of spectral formation in the atmospheres of neutron stars during these violent events as well as its application to observational data on X-ray bursts. The main goal of the presented study is a proper measurement of the fundamental properties for neutron stars. We take both analytical and numerical approaches to the problem of radiative transfer in X-ray illuminated...