Tomáš Plšek


Tomáš Plšek

Tomáš is a PhD student studying hot atmospheres of elliptical galaxies and their radio-mechanical AGN feedback. As a part of his Master thesis, he studied the connection between supermassive black holes in centres of early-type galaxies and radio lobes or surface brightness depressions (X-ray cavities) inflated into their atmospheres.

He examines also the applications of machine learning techniques in Astrophysics. During his Master studies he produced a machine learning pipeline called Cavity Detection Tool (CADET) consisting of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a clustering algorithm, which was trained for finding X-ray cavities on Chandra images of galaxies.

Schematic representation of the Cavity Detection Tool (CADET) pipeline.

He is also interested in SPH simulations of clusters of galaxies. For his Bachelor thesis, he produced a hydrodynamical simulation of a Virgo like cluster using the parallelised cosmological code GADGET-2.

EDUCATION:
 
 
since 9/2021 PhD in Astrophysics: “Studying the physics of hot galactic atmospheres” at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic; Advisor: prof. Mgr. Norbert Werner, PhD.
 
2019 - 2021 MSc in Astrophysics: “The relation between the Bondi accretion rate and jet power in giant elliptical galaxies” at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic; Advisor: prof. Mgr. Norbert Werner, PhD.
 
2016 - 2019 BSc in Astrophysics: “Dark matter modelling of galaxy clusters” at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic; Advisor: Mgr. Filip Hroch, PhD.
 
 

POSITIONS:
 
 
since 3/2021  Researcher in the Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
 
2019 - 2020  Researcher in the Department of Physical Electronics at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
 
2017 - 2018  Demonstrator at Vyškov Observatory

Selected Publications

The infalling elliptical galaxy M89: the chemical composition of the AGN disturbed hot atmosphere (arXiv).
S. Kara, T. Plšek, K. Protušová, J.-P. Breuer, N. Werner, F. Mernier, E.N. Ercan, Jan 2024, MNRAS.

Cavity DEtection Tool (CADET): Pipeline for automatic detection of X-ray cavities in hot galactic and cluster atmospheres (arXiv).
T. Plšek, N. Werner, M. Topinka, A. Simionescu, Nov 2023, MNRAS.

Ram-pressure stripped radio tail and two ULXs in the spiral galaxy HCG 97b (arXiv).
D. Hu, M. Zajaček, N. Werner, R. Grossová, P. Jáchym, I.D. Roberts, A. Ignesti, J.D.P. Kenney, T. Plšek, J.-P. Breuer, T. Shimwell, C. Tasse, Z. Zhu, L. Wu, Oct 2023, MNRAS.

The relation between accretion rate and jet power in early-type galaxies with thermally unstable hot atmospheres (arXiv).
T. Plšek, N. Werner, R. Grossová, M. Topinka, A. Simionescu, S. W. Allen, 2022, MNRAS.

VLA Radio Study of a Sample of Nearby X-ray and Optically Bright Early-Type Galaxies (arXiv).
R. Grossová, N. Werner, F. Massaro, K. Lakhchaura, T. Plšek, K. Gabányi, K. Rajpurohit, R.E.A. Canning, P. Nulsen, E. O’Sullivan, S.W. Allen, and A. Fabian, 2021, Astrophysical Journal Supplement.


For a complete list of publications see here.