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Introduction

My portrait in the jungle! Welcome to my professional home page!

I teach physics in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure of chemistry located in Rennes, France (there is another one in Lille), to prep year students, including the foreign ones following the international curriculum CHEMIST. Feel free to have a look at the school's site!

I cover both theoretical and experimental fields in electricity, electromagnetism, optics and statistical physics. Beside teaching I am involved in several research projects focussing on stellar evolution and planetary sciences.

In this website, the parts written in French are aimed at my students mostly but foreign visitors will find English-speaking sections as well.

Last published work:

An estimate of the chemical composition of Titan's lakes

Abstract

Hundreds of radar-dark patches interpreted as lakes have been discovered in the north and south polar regions of Titan. We have estimated the composition of these lakes by using the direct abundance measurements from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) aboard the Huygens probe and recent photochemical models based on the vertical temperature profile derived by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI). Thermodynamic equilibrium is assumed between the atmosphere and the lakes, which are also considered as nonideal solutions. We find that the main constituents of the lakes are ethane (C2H6) (~76-79%), propane (C3H8) (~7-8%), methane (CH4) (~5-10%), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) (~2-3%), butene (C4H8) (~1%), butane (C4H10) (~1%) and acetylene (C2H2) (~1%). The calculated composition of lakes is then substantially different from what has been expected from models elaborated prior to the exploration of Titan by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.

This paper has been accepted in the american journal Astrophysical Journal Letter (Cordier, Mousis, Lunine, Lavvas, and Vuitton, 2009); a preprint version of that article can be reached here: lakes-astro-ph.pdf.

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Downloading policy The data and softwares available here may be downloaded freely unless explicitly specified. The pictures in general may not be used without my consent but some high resolution images can be sent on request.