Peter Kretschmar - Personal Profiles
Peter Kretschmar
Mission Manager and Astronomer
Main Research Fields
Almost all of my research activities are related to accreting X-ray binaries, mostly accreting X-ray pulsars. Using data from various high-energy missions (XMM-Newton, INTEGRAL, NICER, NuSTAR, RXTE, Suzaku, Swift and others) my colleagues and I study different aspects of these systems: mechanisms of accretion, period evolution, lightcurves, pulse profiles and spectra. One of my specialties is the study of cyclotron resonant scattering features. Other topics of great interest to me include stellar winds and accretion in HMXB and Be X-ray binary outbursts. See also the Be X-ray Binary Monitor project. Other fields of interests are X-ray bursts and their feedback on the accretion disk and gamma-ray binaries.
Keywords
- Accreting X-ray pulsars
- Stellar winds in HMXB systems
- Be X-ray binaries
- Cyclotron line studies, physics of the accretion column
- Accretion column geometry and pulse profiles
- Accretion mechanisms
- X-ray bursts and feedback to accretion
Ongoing collaborations
- Within Space Science Faculty by alphabetical order of family names: Julia Alfonso-Garzón, Isabel Caballero, Felix Fürst, Victoria Grinberg, Matteo Guainazzi, Erik Kuulkers, Jesús Maíz Apellániz, Jan-Uwe Ness, Alicia Rouco-Escorial
- Dr. Karl Remeis Sternwarte, Bamberg, Germany
- IAAT, Tübingen, Germany
- IFCA, Santander, Spain
- X-ray Astronomy Group, Univ. Alicante, Spain
- ISDC, Geneva, Switzerland
- GSFC, Greenbelt, USA
- CASS/UCSD, San Diego, USA
- University of Sharjah, UAE
- IHEP Beijing, China
ISSI Team Meetings
Publications
Recent highlighted papers
XMM-Newton | N. Schartel, R. González-Riestra, P. Kretschmar et al. (arXiv 2022) | Invited chapter for Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics, Eds. C. Bambi and A. Santangelo, Springer Singapore |
Common patterns in pulse profiles of high-mass X-ray binaries | J. Alonso-Hernández, F. Fürst, F., P. Kretschmar, et al. (A&A 662, A62, 2022) | Identified three groups of sources based on the profile shapes, dominant Fourier harmonics and their respective evolution with energy. |
INTEGRAL reloaded: Spacecraft, instruments and ground system | E. Kuulkers, C. Ferrigno, P. Kretschmar, et al. (New Astronomy Reviews, 93, article id. 101629, 2021) | Mission & science status after more than 18 years of operations |
Revisiting the archetypical wind accretor Vela X-1 in depth. Case study of a well-known X-ray binary and the limits of our knowledge | P. Kretschmar, I. El Mellah, S. Martínez-Núñez, et al. (A&A 652, A95, 2021) | Compilation and synthesis of the accumulated knowledge about Vela X-1, both observationally and theoretically. |
The X-Ray Pulsar XTE J1858+034 Observed with NuSTAR and Fermi/GBM: Spectral and Timing Characterization plus a Cyclotron Line | C. Malacaria, P. Kretschmar, Madsen, K.K., et al. (ApJ, 909, 153, 2021) | NuSTAR observation of XTE J1858+034 during its 2019 outburst. Candidate cyclotron line at 48 keV. Single-peaked pulse profile. |
Full list of publications in ADS
Project/mission at ESA
XMM-Newton, previously also INTEGRAL and Hitomi (ASTRO-H)
Member of IAU, EAS, SSAA and SEA
ORCID 0000-0001-9840-2048