Astrophysics and Cosmology Research at the JBCA 2020-2023
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
This grant supports the research of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. Our research is a divided into 3 groups. There are too many specific proposals to describe in detail, do below we have given a brief layman's explanation of the work being carried out by the three groups.
Cosmology: This is the study of the Universe as a whole. The main aim is to understand the processes by which the large scale feature of the Universe formed and to constrain the various different kinds of matter that existed within it. These include dark matter and dark energy which are thought to constitute more than 95% of the total. We do this by comparison to observations of weak and strong gravitational lensing which is the distortion of light predicted to be caused by massive objects in Einstein' Theory of General Relativity, the cosmic microwave background which is the faint emission of radiation created at the time when protons and electrons come together to form hydrogen and the emission given off by neutral hydrogen atoms in galaxies. The research we propose here involves both theory and observation as well as the development of the technology necessary to make the observations possible.
Sun, Stars and Galaxies: The researchers in this group study a wide range of astrophysical processes that are reasonable for the formation and evolution of the objects in the name of the group. Specific key areas that the group is interested in are the formation of stars much larger than the Sun and the subsequent evolution, the properties of the so-called interstellar medium (ISM) which comprises molecules not bound to stars and the magnetic fields that permeate space.
Pulsars and Time Domain Astrophysics: The focus of this group is astrophysical signatures that are changing with time- things which come on and off, often with some kind of regularity. These include Pulsars which are a non-standard star type, known as a neutron star, which is a dead star supported by the quantum pressure of neutrons. The radio emission from these objects pulses on an off with extraordinary regularity allowing them to acts cosmic clocks. The constantly measuring these clocks as the neutron stars spin and move through space, often impacted on by a companion star, allows the most precise constraints on the nature of gravity outside the solar system. Other phenomena studied by this group include Nova explosions, other variable stars, and variability induced by the lensing effects of one star passing in front of another, called microlensing.
Cosmology: This is the study of the Universe as a whole. The main aim is to understand the processes by which the large scale feature of the Universe formed and to constrain the various different kinds of matter that existed within it. These include dark matter and dark energy which are thought to constitute more than 95% of the total. We do this by comparison to observations of weak and strong gravitational lensing which is the distortion of light predicted to be caused by massive objects in Einstein' Theory of General Relativity, the cosmic microwave background which is the faint emission of radiation created at the time when protons and electrons come together to form hydrogen and the emission given off by neutral hydrogen atoms in galaxies. The research we propose here involves both theory and observation as well as the development of the technology necessary to make the observations possible.
Sun, Stars and Galaxies: The researchers in this group study a wide range of astrophysical processes that are reasonable for the formation and evolution of the objects in the name of the group. Specific key areas that the group is interested in are the formation of stars much larger than the Sun and the subsequent evolution, the properties of the so-called interstellar medium (ISM) which comprises molecules not bound to stars and the magnetic fields that permeate space.
Pulsars and Time Domain Astrophysics: The focus of this group is astrophysical signatures that are changing with time- things which come on and off, often with some kind of regularity. These include Pulsars which are a non-standard star type, known as a neutron star, which is a dead star supported by the quantum pressure of neutrons. The radio emission from these objects pulses on an off with extraordinary regularity allowing them to acts cosmic clocks. The constantly measuring these clocks as the neutron stars spin and move through space, often impacted on by a companion star, allows the most precise constraints on the nature of gravity outside the solar system. Other phenomena studied by this group include Nova explosions, other variable stars, and variability induced by the lensing effects of one star passing in front of another, called microlensing.
Planned Impact
The range of research we undertake and the world-class facilities within and in close association with JBCA (the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, e-MERLIN, the Lovell Telescope, the ALMA ARC and the SKA HQ) will provide key pathways to increasing our already strong impact on UK and global industry, the next generation of scientists and engineers, and the general public. The University's investment in the Jodrell Bank site combined with significant external funding (e.g. from Heritage Lottery Fund) will enable us to expand its use as an iconic venue for public and industrial engagement. The programme described here formed a key part of the School's submission for REF2014, helping it to be ranked highest in the REF for physics impact with 83% at 4* and 17% at 3*. Our outreach \& public engagement programme is extremely strong and continues to grow, particularly through its work with the University's award-winning Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and the BBC. With the recent decision on SKA HQ location and our strong research work in this area, there is also growing impact in both outreach and industrial engagement in this area.
Our "Pathways to Impact" statement in the case for support outlines things that we have done in recent times under the headings of "Outreach and Public Engagement" and "Industrial and economic impact". We list some highlights below.
- Jodcast: Podcast run by students with 7000 regular listeners.
- 215000 Twitter and 18000 Facebook followers
- Stargazing live, Pulsar Hunters, Science Programmes presented by Danielle George
- JB Discovery centre with 190000 visitors per year
- Award winning Bluedot Festivals
- Industry contracts for SKA work including CISCO, AASL, NPL, AEON, Critical Software, MMI, GEANT
- Newton programme for Radio Astronomy in Africa.
Our "Pathways to Impact" statement in the case for support outlines things that we have done in recent times under the headings of "Outreach and Public Engagement" and "Industrial and economic impact". We list some highlights below.
- Jodcast: Podcast run by students with 7000 regular listeners.
- 215000 Twitter and 18000 Facebook followers
- Stargazing live, Pulsar Hunters, Science Programmes presented by Danielle George
- JB Discovery centre with 190000 visitors per year
- Award winning Bluedot Festivals
- Industry contracts for SKA work including CISCO, AASL, NPL, AEON, Critical Software, MMI, GEANT
- Newton programme for Radio Astronomy in Africa.
Organisations
Publications
Beltrán M
(2022)
The sharp ALMA view of infall and outflow in the massive protocluster G31.41+0.31
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Beltrán M
(2021)
Fragmentation in the massive G31.41+0.31 protocluster
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bendo G
(2020)
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon excitation in nearby spiral galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bernardinelli P
(2021)
C/2014 UN 271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein): The Nearly Spherical Cow of Comets
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Bernardinelli P
(2022)
A Search of the Full Six Years of the Dark Energy Survey for Outer Solar System Objects
in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Bernstein L
(2020)
A Two Carrier Families Spectral Profile Model for Anomalous Microwave Emission
in The Astrophysical Journal
Beuther H
(2020)
Gravity and Rotation Drag the Magnetic Field in High-mass Star Formation
in The Astrophysical Journal
Bezuidenhout M
(2022)
MeerTRAP: 12 Galactic fast transients detected in a real-time, commensal MeerKAT survey
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bhatawdekar R
(2021)
UV Spectral Slopes at z = 6-9 in the Hubble Frontier Fields: Lack of Evidence for Unusual or Population III Stellar Populations
in The Astrophysical Journal
Bhattacharyya B
(2021)
Discovery and Timing of Three Millisecond Pulsars in Radio and Gamma-Rays with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and Fermi Large Area Telescope
in The Astrophysical Journal
Bilous A
(2020)
A LOFAR census of non-recycled pulsars: extending to frequencies below 80 MHz
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bluck A
(2022)
The quenching of galaxies, bulges, and disks since cosmic noon A machine learning approach for identifying causality in astronomical data
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bolliet B
(2021)
Spectral distortion constraints on photon injection from low-mass decaying particles
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bondonneau L
(2020)
A census of the pulsar population observed with the international LOFAR station FR606 at low frequencies (25-80 MHz)
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Boshkayev K
(2021)
Testing generalized logotropic models with cosmic growth
in Physical Review D
Bowler R
(2022)
The discovery of rest-frame UV colour gradients and a diversity of dust morphologies in bright z ? 7 Lyman-break galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bright J
(2020)
An extremely powerful long-lived superluminal ejection from the black hole MAXI J1820+070
in Nature Astronomy
Burke C
(2022)
Dwarf AGNs from Optical Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): insights from the dark energy survey deep fields
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cagliari M
(2022)
Euclid : Constraining ensemble photometric redshift distributions with stacked spectroscopy
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Caleb M
(2022)
Radio and X-ray observations of giant pulses from XTE J1810 - 197
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cameron A
(2020)
The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey - XVI. Discovery and timing of 40 pulsars from the southern Galactic plane
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Carli E
(2022)
TRAPUM upper limits on pulsed radio emission for SMC X-ray pulsar J0058-7218
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Carretti E
(2022)
Magnetic field strength in cosmic web filaments
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Casadio C
(2021)
SMILE: Search for MIlli-LEnses
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Casassus S
(2021)
Resolved spectral variations of the centimetre-wavelength continuum from the ? Oph W photodissociation region
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cepeda-Arroita R
(2021)
Detection of spectral variations of Anomalous Microwave Emission with QUIJOTE and C-BASS
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chalumeau A
(2022)
Noise analysis in the European Pulsar Timing Array data release 2 and its implications on the gravitational-wave background search
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Champion D
(2020)
High-cadence observations and variable spin behaviour of magnetar Swift J1818.0-1607 after its outburst
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chan K
(2022)
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillations with three-dimensional clustering
in Physical Review D
Chen A
(2021)
Constraints on dark matter to dark radiation conversion in the late universe with DES-Y1 and external data
in Physical Review D
Chen A
(2023)
Constraining the baryonic feedback with cosmic shear using the DES Year-3 small-scale measurements
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chen H
(2020)
Searching for obscured AGN in z ~ 2 submillimetre galaxies
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Chen R
(2022)
Measuring Cosmological Parameters with Type Ia Supernovae in redMaGiC Galaxies
in The Astrophysical Journal
Chen S
(2021)
Common-red-signal analysis with 24-yr high-precision timing of the European Pulsar Timing Array: inferences in the stochastic gravitational-wave background search
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chen W
(2021)
Wide Field Beamformed Observation with MeerKAT
in Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation
Chen W
(2023)
MeerKAT discovery of 13 new pulsars in Omega Centauri
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chen Z
(2023)
Towards optimal foreground mitigation strategies for interferometric H i intensity mapping in the low-redshift Universe
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cheng C
(2023)
JWST's PEARLS: A JWST/NIRCam View of ALMA Sources
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Cheng T
(2021)
Galaxy morphological classification catalogue of the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data with convolutional neural networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cheng T
(2023)
Lessons learned from the two largest Galaxy morphological classification catalogues built by convolutional neural networks
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cheng T
(2021)
Beyond the hubble sequence - exploring galaxy morphology with unsupervised machine learning
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Chibueze J
(2022)
A MeerKAT, e-MERLIN, H.E.S.S., and Swift search for persistent and transient emission associated with three localized FRBs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ching T
(2022)
The JCMT BISTRO-2 Survey: Magnetic Fields of the Massive DR21 Filament
in The Astrophysical Journal
Chluba J
(2021)
New horizons in cosmology with spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background
in Experimental Astronomy
Chung D
(2022)
COMAP Early Science. V. Constraints and Forecasts at z ~ 3
in The Astrophysical Journal
Chung D
(2023)
The deconvolved distribution estimator: enhancing reionization-era CO line-intensity mapping analyses with a cross-correlation analogue for one-point statistics
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Clark C
(2023)
The TRAPUM L -band survey for pulsars in Fermi -LAT gamma-ray sources
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Clark CJ
(2023)
Neutron star mass estimates from gamma-ray eclipses in spider millisecond pulsar binaries.
in Nature astronomy
| Title | Comparing recent PTA results on the nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background - full noise and GWB parameter comparison plots |
| Description | A full collection of plots comparing the noise properties of individual pulsars and gravitational wave background parameters discussed in the companion paper Comparing recent PTA results on the nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background (IPTA 2024). Section4_GWB_comparison.zip supplements and expands section 4.1, "Comparing the published GWB measurements," of IPTA (2024). It contains parameter difference distributions for GWB model parameters. There are four different models included. The HD correlated powerlaw (PL) model make up the basis for Figure 2. Additionally, there are three comparisons not included in IPTA (2024). First, comparisons the common uncorrelated red noise (CURN) PL model are included. Finally, comparisons of two free spectral (FS) models (HD and CURN) are included. These comparisons fit the HD and CURN FS posteriors using the ceffyl software package, and then compare the parameters of the resulting powerlaw fits. Section5_Noise_comparison.zip supplements section 5, "Comparing Pulsar Noice Properties," of IPTA (2024). It contains plots for 27 pulsars timed by more than one PTA collaboration, including the plots for PSR J1012+5307, which are presented in Figure 7. The plots include noise parameter posteriors, time domain GP realizations, TOA residuals, and TOA radio frequency. |
| Type Of Art | Image |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10809659 |
| Title | Comparing recent PTA results on the nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background - full noise and GWB parameter comparison plots |
| Description | A full collection of plots comparing the noise properties of individual pulsars and gravitational wave background parameters discussed in the companion paper Comparing recent PTA results on the nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background (IPTA 2024). Section4_GWB_comparison.zip supplements and expands section 4.1, "Comparing the published GWB measurements," of IPTA (2024). It contains parameter difference distributions for GWB model parameters. There are four different models included. The HD correlated powerlaw (PL) model make up the basis for Figure 2. Additionally, there are three comparisons not included in IPTA (2024). First, comparisons the common uncorrelated red noise (CURN) PL model are included. Finally, comparisons of two free spectral (FS) models (HD and CURN) are included. These comparisons fit the HD and CURN FS posteriors using the ceffyl software package, and then compare the parameters of the resulting powerlaw fits. Section5_Noise_comparison.zip supplements section 5, "Comparing Pulsar Noice Properties," of IPTA (2024). It contains plots for 27 pulsars timed by more than one PTA collaboration, including the plots for PSR J1012+5307, which are presented in Figure 7. The plots include noise parameter posteriors, time domain GP realizations, TOA residuals, and TOA radio frequency. |
| Type Of Art | Image |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10809660 |
| Title | IPTA DR2 - GWB analysis MCMC output |
| Description | IPTA DR2 common red noise, MCMC output These files are the primary output from a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling process. They are samples from the posterior probability distribution for a particular model described in the companion paper. Each zipped tarball contains four files. The "chain" file has several tab-separated columns, each of which corresponds to a model parameter, except the last four which are metadata. The parameter names (including metadata) are listed in the companion "params" file. The frequencies used in the common red noise models are listed in the "crn_frequencies" file. Additional information is provided in a README file. Each row of the chain file is one sample from the model posterior. The first samples at the beginning of the MCMC are the "burn-in" phase, before the chain has converged to the posterior. We recommend discarding the first ~25% of samples before using them to make inferences. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/5787556 |
| Title | IPTA DR2 - GWB analysis MCMC output |
| Description | IPTA DR2 common red noise, MCMC output These files are the primary output from a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling process. They are samples from the posterior probability distribution for a particular model described in the companion paper. Each zipped tarball contains four files. The "chain" file has several tab-separated columns, each of which corresponds to a model parameter, except the last four which are metadata. The parameter names (including metadata) are listed in the companion "params" file. The frequencies used in the common red noise models are listed in the "crn_frequencies" file. Additional information is provided in a README file. Each row of the chain file is one sample from the model posterior. The first samples at the beginning of the MCMC are the "burn-in" phase, before the chain has converged to the posterior. We recommend discarding the first ~25% of samples before using them to make inferences. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/5787557 |
| Title | PN chemical abundances in Galactic Bulge |
| Description | VizieR online Data Catalogue associated with article published in journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with title ' A catalogue of planetary nebulae chemical abundances in the Galactic bulge.' (bibcode: 2024MNRAS.527.6363T) |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/527/6363 |