Astrophysicist

I work as a research scientist at the Dr. Karl Remeis Observatory in Bamberg (ECAP, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), where I am currently pursuing my habilitation. I am member of the Athena WFI, Athena X-IFU, eROSITA, and BLACKSTAR collaboration and Co-I of the Athena X-IFU.

Black Hole Physics

My main focus of research is studying high energy processes around black holes to further our understanding of their immediate vicinity in the presence of strong gravity. As a major contribution, for example, I devolped the relxill model, which predicts the relativistic reflection of X-rays at the inner accretion disk in these objects.

X-ray detector simulations

I am also contributing to the development of scientific X-ray detectors by the development of the end-to-end simulator SIXTE for current and new missions such as Athena, XRISM, eROSITA, or XMM-Newton.

Relativistic Reflection

The webpage for the download and documentation of the relativistic reflection model relxill can be found here.

relxill is a relativistic reflection model, which can be readily used in common X-ray data analysis tools such as isis, xspec, or sherpa. It combines the xillver reflection code (Garcia et al., 2010, 2011, 2013) and the relline ray tracing code (Dauser et al., 2010, 2013). The striking feature is that for each point on the disk the proper xillver-reflection spectrum is chosen for each relativistically calculated emission angle. The implications of this improvement and more details regarding the model are provided in Garcia & Dauser et al. (2014, ApJ, 782, 76) and Dauser & Garcia et al. (2014, MNRAS, 444, L100). More recently returning radiation has also been added (Dauser et al, 2022, MNRAS , 514, 3965).

Publications

Scientific Publications

For a list of my publications please follow this link to the ADS: link.

Software Projects

My public software projects, including relxill and SIXTE can also be found on https://github.com/thdauser/. For the most recent and detailed information, however, I recommend visiting the respective webpages of relxill and SIXTE.

Climbing and Mountaineering

When I am out of office, I am likely hanging in a vertical rock face trying to climb it.

If you want to follow my activities, have a look at my Instagram account @thdauser (see below). You can also have a look at my profile at my sponsor DMM Wales here. Big thanks to my sponsors for supporting me.

Preview of my Instagram feed:

A portrait about me on German TV: