TORCH

Thermonuclear bursts
Outshining
Relativistic jets,
Coronae, and
Hot accretion flows

About TORCH

TORCH is a very exciting and ambitious project aimed at using thermonuclear bursts on neutron stars to provide a new perspective on the physics of accretion disks, coronae, winds and jets. It is mainly funded by a 1.5 Meuro Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council NWO, following a successful pilot experiment that was funded by a 50keuro XS grant from NWO.

The TORCH Team

Nathalie Degenaar
(Amsterdam, NL)

Tom Maccarone
(Texas Tech, USA)

Tom Russell
(INAF Palermo, IT)

Jakob van den Eijnden
(Amsterdam, NL)

Eli Pattie
(Amsterdam, NL)

Alex Tetarenko
(Lethbridge, CA)

Julia Speicher
(Amsterdam, NL)

Chuanyu Wei
(Amsterdam, NL)

Simo van de Vosse
(Amsterdam, NL)

TORCH Programs

Currently our main efforts are to obtain multi-wavelength data sets that allow us to detect thermonuclear bursts and their impact on their surroundings. We use X-rays, optical, near-infrared, sub-mm and radio data from many different observing facilities (e.g., Integral, NICER, XMM-Newton, Einstein Probe, Swift, SVOM, VLT, JWST, SMA, NOEMA, ALMA, ATCA, VLA). We are currently carrying out several surveys, targeted campaigns and pilot experiments.

Some early stories can be found here, but many more are to come:
A cosmic speed camera
The devastating impact of X-ray bursts
The effects of a violent thermonuclear burst

TORCH Collaborators

Recently initiated and future endeavors include numerical simulations of the impact of thermonuclear bursts on the surrounding accretion flow and outflows. Our collaborators are key in this, as well as in our observational efforts.

  • Oliver Porth (U. of Amsterdam, NL)
  • James Miller-Jones (Curtin U., AUS)
  • Celia Sanchez Fernandez (ESAC, ES)
  • Erik Kuulkers (ESTEC, NL)
  • Melania Del Santo (INAF Palermo, IT)
  • Federico Vincentelli (INAF Roma, IT)
  • Julian Malzac (IRAP, FR)
  • David Ballantyne (Georgia Tech, USA)
  • Karri Koljonen (NTNU, NO)
  • ….