Pierre-Olivier PETRUCCI
Chargé de Recherche CNRS

Contact

Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG)
Université Grenoble Alpes, CS 40700
38058 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France

pierre-olivier.petrucci@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

+33 4 76 63 55 22

Research Interests


I am specialist of high energy processes in the environment of compact objects (X-ray binaries and AGNs) from a theoretical and observational point of view through the development of semi-analytical model and the participation as PI and co-I of high energy observations.

Active Galactic Nuclei: While almost all galaxies harbor a supermassive blackhole (Mbh ~ millions to billions of solar masses) in their center, about 10% of them possess an active nuclei emitting tremendous amount of radiation (much more than the emission of the entire host galaxy itself) in a size of the order of our solar system. These regions radiate mainly at high energy from UV to X-ray/gamma rays. I study these objects to understand the origin of this high energy emission and constrain the close environment of the black hole.

X-ray binaries/microquasars: The class of so-called microquasars, can be seen as galactic counterparts of the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), but on a much smaller scale ; they are thought to harbor stellar mass black holes (Mbh ∼ 10s of solar masses) and exhibit the same kind of accretion-ejection processes as AGN. Microquasars spend most of their time in quiescence at a very low flux (undetectable in X-rays) but, from time to time, they enter in outburst, their X-ray flux increases by several order of magnitude during period of weeks to months. Like for AGN, I observed these objects mainly in X-rays to understand the accretion-ejection processes taking place there and how they compare with those observed in AGNs.

I also participate in the hardware development of light concentrators for CTA. I am responsible of the pre-production and production of these cones for the NectarCAM camera of the Middle Size Telescopes.