Erwan QUINTIN

ESA Research Fellow -
High Energy Astrophysics

ABOUT ME

I'm an ESA Research Fellow at ESAC, Madrid.


My work has been mainly focused on the transient sources hidden in the X-ray archives: trying to find the ones we have missed, and improving our ability to catch new ones.

 

LinkedInGitHubLink

On the theoretical side, I'm mostly interested in the tantrums of our Universe: transient and extreme accretions events around compact objects, such as Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources, Tidal Disruption Events, and Quasi-Periodic Eruptions.

Scientific Interests

Transient Detection

While we usually imagine the stars and the sky as a fixed background to our lives, this is very far from the truth ! The Universe is filled with rare, bright and transient events. My work has been focused on catching them as soon as possible, especially in the pipeline of the XMM-Newton telescope.

Archival Data Mining

Astronomers are very careful about their data - everything that has ever  been taken a picture of is stored online in available archives. A part of my work has been to mine into these treasure troves, searching for rare and elusive events that we might have seen in the past - but the true value of which was missed...

Tidal Disruption Events & Quasi-Periodic Eruptions

I mainly focus on two types of transient accretion events: Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), which are huge months-long explosions after the destruction of a star by the tidal forces around a black hole - and Quasi-Periodic Eruptions (QPEs), which are mysterious 1h-long repeated bursts that seem to be linked to TDEs (?)

 If you want more details, you can take a look at the "Research Topics" page !