Diego F. Torres

Diego F. Torres

Institut de Ciències de l'Espai

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I was born in Buenos Aires, where I studied up to obtaining my doctoral degree in physics from the National University at La Plata, working on cosmology and astrophysics of extended gravitational theories. After several years in fellowships around the world, I moved to the Institute of Space Sciences to start a research group on high-energy astrophysics. My research focuses on compact objects and cosmic rays. I have received several scientific awards  including the Chinese Academy of Science Senior Visiting Professorship as well as its Presidential Fellowship, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award of the Humboldt Foundation of Germany, the Shakti Duggal Award on Cosmic Ray Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and several others. I became Director of the Institute of Space Sciences in March 2016.


Research interests

The familiar sights of peacefully shining stars would be replaced by something extreme and variable should you look with gamma-ray eyes. You would be glancing at the most energetic phenomena known in astrophysics: accreting masses around black holes, pulsars, close binaries, regions of stellar formation, explosions of supernovae, and others. I develop theoretical models for these scenarios, and test them with observations using ground-based telescopes and satellites. My research focuses on compact objects and cosmic rays. My earlier research includes gravitation and cosmology; particularly, scalar-tensor theories and non-minimal couplings, scalar dark matter, boson stars, gravitational lensing, and wormholes. I published several papers on all these topics. My research group hosted about 40 scientists since its foundation in 2006. You can know more about all this, including links to my publications, from my webpage,  https://sites.google.com/view/dft-research

Selected publications

– Mestre E, de Ona Wilhelmi E, Zanin R, Torres DF & Tibaldo L 2020, ‘Prospects for the characterization of the VHE emission from the Crab nebula and pulsar with the Cherenkov Telescope Array’, MNRAS, 492, 1, 708 – 718.

– Anchordoqui LA & Torres DF 2020, ‘Exploring the superwind mechanism for generating ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays using large-scale modeling of starbursts’, Physical Review D, 102, 2, 023034.

– Li J, Torres DF, Liu R-Y, Kerr M, Wilhelmi EdeO & Su Y 2020, ‘Gamma-ray heartbeat powered by the microquasar SS 433‘, Nature Astronomy, 4, 1177–1184.

– Olmi, B.; Torres, D. F. 2020, ‘Introducing the HD plus B model for pulsar wind nebulae: a hybrid hydrodynamics/radiative approach’, MNRAS, 494, 3, 4357 – 4370.

– Bandiera, R.; Bucciantini, N.; Martin, J.; Olmi, B.; Torres, D. F. 2020, ‘Reverberation of pulsar wind nebulae (I): impact of the medium properties and other parameters upon the extent of the compression’, MNRAS, 499, 2, 2051 – 2062.

– The Fermi-LAT Collaboration (including D. F. Torres) 2020, ‘Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog’, ApJ Supplement Series 247, 33.

– Francesco Coti Zelati, Diego F. Torres, Jian Li, Daniele Vigano, 2020, ‘Spectral characterization of the non-thermal X-ray emission of gamma-ray pulsars‘, MNRAS, 492, 1, 1025 – 1043.

– Martin J, Torres DF & Zhang B 2020, ‘Exploring the effects of magnetar bursts in pulsar wind nebulae‘, JHEAp 28, 10-18.


Selected research activities

-Director of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC)

-Member of Fermi-LAT and CTA collaborations.

-Published 16 international journals papers this year, and a chapter of book.

-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of High Energy Astrophysics (Elsevier).

-Have been a referee for all mainstream astronomical journals this year, as well as of projects, promotions, and grants offered by UK, Spain, South Africa, Poland, Italy, Hong Kong, Denmark, Belgium and Argentina.