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Tidal disruption events in real time: from Rubin/LSST alerts to TeV gamma rays with H.E.S.S. and CTAO, a


Thesis topic details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

SL-DRF-27-0078  

Direction

DRF

Thesis topic details

Category

Corpuscular physics and outer space

Thesis topics

Tidal disruption events in real time: from Rubin/LSST alerts to TeV gamma rays with H.E.S.S. and CTAO, and a bridge to LISA

Contract

Thèse

Job description

When a star ventures too close to a supermassive black hole, it is torn apart by tidal forces in a tidal disruption event (TDE). These rare flares reveal otherwise dormant black holes and may launch relativistic jets that accelerate particles to extreme energies, yet no TeV gamma-ray emission from a TDE has been detected so far. The Rubin Observatory (LSST) will discover thousands of TDEs, provided they are identified early among millions of nightly alerts and followed up quickly.

This PhD builds on our group's TRACER project and will develop the gamma-ray branch of this chain. The student will integrate the TDE candidates classified by the Fink broker into the Astro-COLIBRI platform (web and smartphone apps) and select those most promising for very-high-energy emission. The student will then trigger and analyse observations with H.E.S.S. and, later, CTAO, complemented by X-ray and radio data. In parallel, the student will explore a link to the future gravitational-wave observatory LISA, in particular extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (stellar-mass compact objects spiralling into massive black holes) in galactic nuclei. This involves studying TDE@LISA observability and defining how LISA alerts (timescales, thresholds, localisation) could be distributed through Astro-COLIBRI. Expected results are a working alert-to-observation pipeline, the first systematic gamma-ray detections or constraints on particle acceleration in TDEs, a contribution to the CTAO TDE science programme, and a prototype of LISA alert handling.

University / doctoral school

PHENIICS (PHENIICS)

Thesis topic location

Site

Saclay

Requester

Position start date

01/10/2027

Person to be contacted by the applicant

Schussler Fabian fabian.schussler@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/IRFU
IRFU/DPhP
CEA Paris-Saclay
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex
+33169083020

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

Schussler Fabian fabian.schussler@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/IRFU
IRFU/DPhP
CEA Paris-Saclay
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex
+33169083020

En savoir plus

https://www.multimessenger-astronomy.com/
https://irfu.cea.fr/dphp/index.php