Birmingham Astrophysics - Rolling Grant 2007-2012
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
The work of the Birmingham Astrophysics & Space Research group aims to improve our understanding of the Universe, and the force of gravity which governs its structure and growth. Our extragalactic studies aim to discover the way in which galaxies, such as our own Milky Way galaxy, have developed from the small fluctuations present in the primordial gas which filled the Universe after the Big Bang, as well as probing the mysterious 'dark matter' which appears to account for over 90% of the matter in the Universe at large. Our knowledge of the cosmos to date is gleaned almost entirely from study of the electromagnetic radiation (from radio waves to gamma rays) which reaches the Earth from space. However, a whole new astronomical 'window' is about to open, based on the propagating ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. Detection of these signals is hugely demanding, but large laser-interferometers are now very close to detecting them for the first time, and the Birmingham group is fully involved in these experiments, and in the plans to move these techniques into space within the next decade. This will ultimately allow us to study the gravitational signals from giant black holes, and from the Big Bang itself. We are working towards the first detection of gravitational waves, but also exploring the new techniques which will be required to turn the study of gravitational waves into a true branch of astronomy.
Organisations
Publications
Chelkowski S
(2009)
Prospects of higher-order Laguerre-Gauss modes in future gravitational wave detectors
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2008)
Publisher's Note: Upper limit map of a background of gravitational waves [Phys. Rev. D 76 , 082003 (2007)]
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2008)
Publisher's Note: Upper limits on gravitational wave emission from 78 radio pulsars [Phys. Rev. D 76 , 042001 (2007)]
in Physical Review D
Harms J
(2007)
Quantum-noise power spectrum of fields with discrete classical components
in Physical Review A
Van Weeren R
(2009)
Radio observations of ZwCl 2341.1+0000: a double radio relic cluster
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Mahajan S
(2009)
Red star-forming and blue passive galaxies in clusters
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Babak S
(2008)
Report on the second Mock LISA data challenge
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Swinbank A
(2007)
Resolved spectroscopy of a gravitationally lensed L* Lyman-break galaxy at z~ 5
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Zhang Y
(2007)
Scaling relations and mass calibration of the X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at redshift ~0.2: XMM-Newton observations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Khosroshahi H
(2007)
Scaling relations in fossil galaxy groups
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Robinson E
(2008)
Search for a stochastic gravitational-wave signal in the second round of the Mock LISA Data Challenges
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Abbott B
(2007)
Search for gravitational wave radiation associated with the pulsating tail of the SGR 1806 - 20 hyperflare of 27 December 2004 using LIGO
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2009)
Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed black holes in LIGO S4 data
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2008)
Search for gravitational waves associated with 39 gamma-ray bursts using data from the second, third, and fourth LIGO runs
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2008)
Search for gravitational waves from binary inspirals in S3 and S4 LIGO data
in Physical Review D
Abadie J
(2010)
Search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence in LIGO and Virgo data from S5 and VSR1
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2009)
Search for gravitational waves from low mass binary coalescences in the first year of LIGO's S5 data
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2009)
Search for gravitational waves from low mass compact binary coalescence in 186 days of LIGO's fifth science run
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2010)
SEARCH FOR GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE BURSTS ASSOCIATED WITH GAMMA-RAY BURSTS USING DATA FROM LIGO SCIENCE RUN 5 AND VIRGO SCIENCE RUN 1
in The Astrophysical Journal
Abbott B
(2008)
Search for gravitational-wave bursts from soft gamma repeaters.
in Physical review letters
Abbott B
(2007)
Search for gravitational-wave bursts in LIGO data from the fourth science run
in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Abbott B
(2009)
Search for gravitational-wave bursts in the first year of the fifth LIGO science run
in Physical Review D
Abadie J
(2010)
SEARCH FOR GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE INSPIRAL SIGNALS ASSOCIATED WITH SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS DURING LIGO'S FIFTH AND VIRGO'S FIRST SCIENCE RUN
in The Astrophysical Journal
Abbott B
(2009)
Search for high frequency gravitational-wave bursts in the first calendar year of LIGO's fifth science run
in Physical Review D
Abbott B
(2008)
Search of S3 LIGO data for gravitational wave signals from spinning black hole and neutron star binary inspirals
in Physical Review D