A Programme of Technology, Astrophysics and Cosmology in Cardiff, 2022-2025
Lead Research Organisation:
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Astronomers try to answer a wide range of questions, from fundamental ones, such as how stars and galaxies are formed and questions about the structure and evolution of the universe itself, to more detailed questions about the physical and chemical processes occurring in astronomical objects. A powerful way of trying to answer some of the most important ones is to make observations in the submillimetre waveband, one of the newest branches of astronomy. The births of stars and galaxies, for example, occur in huge clouds of gas and dust, and the dust - tiny solid fragments in interstellar space - hides the births from traditional optical telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope. With submillimetre telescopes, however, it is possible to observe radiation from the dust itself, allowing astronomers to observe the very earliest stages in the lives of stars and galaxies. Submillimetre astronomy is one of our specialities in Cardiff, with our group containing both astronomers that use submillimetre telescopes but also scientists that build novel cameras and other devices that work in this waveband - technology that also has many uses outside astronomy. In this proposal we ask for funds from the UK taxpayer to support our research. Much of this research involves using or building submillimetre instruments, but some of the projects we propose will use telescopes in other wavebands or use powerful computers to simulate the processes involved in the birth of a star or the formation of a galaxy. The questions we will try to answer include many of the most important ones. One of the surprising things about planets like ours is that they exist at all, because centimetre-sized solid chunks around a star are likely to be destroyed before they coalesce to form bigger chunks and eventually planets. We will use radio observations to search for chunks of this size in the disks of dust around newly formed stars, with the aim of understanding how small rocky planets like our own were formed, and in another project we will use a new balloon observatory to study the other end of the planetary spectrum - the giant 'hot Jupiters' that have been discovered around nearby stars. We propose several projects to investigate the formation of stars, both the stars that are forming around us today and a special population of stars with very few heavy elements that astronomers think formed just after the Big Bang, using a mixture of observations and computer simulations. We propose two project that will study supernovae, the titanic explosions that occur when a massive star collapses at the end of its life. One project will investigate the formation of dust grains and molecular gas within a supernova explosion, the other the recently discovered superluminous supernovae, up to 100 times more luminous than the standard kind. Again using a mixture of observations and computer simulations, we propose several projects to study galaxies, including a study of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest big galaxy, an investigation of the super-massive black holes at the centres of nearby galaxies, a computer simulation of the gas flows around a galaxy, and a project to find more examples of very distant galaxies, which we are seeing only shortly after the Big Bang and that are being highly magnified by the gravity of close galaxies. More examples of these highly magnified galaxies is important because the magnification means that we can study the way galaxies are formed in great detail. We also propose two technical projects, one to develop kinetic inductance detectors, a kind of detector that our group largely discovered and which makes possible revolutionary new instruments, and one to develop further 'meta-materials', a kind of material that makes possible novel components for instruments, such as flat lenses, and which our group has used to make the filters for all submillimetre telescopes, on the ground and in space, over the last 30 years.
Organisations
Publications

Watts A
(2023)
VERTICO V: The environmentally driven evolution of the inner cold gas discs of Virgo cluster galaxies
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia

Pan G
(2022)
Synthesis and electronic properties of Nd n + 1 Ni n O 3 n + 1 Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate thin films
in Physical Review Materials


Kreisch C
(2024)
Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The persistence of neutrino self-interaction in cosmological measurements
in Physical Review D

Mallaby-Kay M
(2023)
Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with ACT, DES, and BOSS: A novel hybrid estimator
in Physical Review D

Pan GA
(2022)
Superconductivity in a quintuple-layer square-planar nickelate.
in Nature materials

De Marco O
(2023)
Author Correction: The messy death of a multiple star system and the resulting planetary nebula as observed by JWST
in Nature Astronomy

De Marco O
(2022)
The messy death of a multiple star system and the resulting planetary nebula as observed by JWST
in Nature Astronomy

Klitsch A
(2023)
ALMACAL - X. Constraints on molecular gas in the low-redshift circumgalactic medium
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters

Prole L
(2022)
Primordial magnetic fields in Population III star formation: a magnetized resolution study
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Jin S
(2024)
The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Whitworth A
(2022)
Ionizing feedback from an O star formed in a shock-compressed layer
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

García-Rojas J
(2022)
MUSE spectroscopy of planetary nebulae with high abundance discrepancies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Priestley F
(2022)
The widths of magnetized filaments in molecular clouds
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Dominiak P
(2024)
The MASSIVE survey - XIX. Molecular gas measurements of the supermassive black hole masses in the elliptical galaxies NGC 1684 and NGC 0997
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Hervías-Caimapo C
(2024)
The Atacama cosmology telescope: flux upper limits from a targeted search for extragalactic transients
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Matsuura M
(2022)
Mid-infrared imaging of Supernova 1987A
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Loni A
(2023)
NGC 1436: the making of a lenticular galaxy in the Fornax Cluster
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Niculescu-Duvaz M
(2023)
Quantifying the dust in SN 2012aw and iPTF14hls with ORBYTS
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Bendo G
(2023)
The bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) - II. Millimetre photometry of gravitational lens candidates
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Lelli F
(2022)
WISDOM Project - XIII. Feeding molecular gas to the supermassive black hole in the starburst AGN-host galaxy Fairall 49
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Priestley F
(2023)
Differences in chemical evolution between isolated and embedded prestellar cores
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Liu L
(2022)
WISDOM Project - XII. Clump properties and turbulence regulated by clump-clump collisions in the dwarf galaxy NGC 404
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Brennan S
(2022)
Photometric and spectroscopic evolution of the interacting transient AT 2016jbu(Gaia16cfr)
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Rigby A
(2024)
The dynamic centres of infrared-dark clouds and the formation of cores
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Jones G
(2023)
On the density regime probed by HCN emission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Borsato E
(2024)
Characterization of Herschel -selected strong lens candidates through HST and sub-mm/mm observations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Davis T
(2022)
WISDOM Project - X. The morphology of the molecular ISM in galaxy centres and its dependence on galaxy structure
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Giulietti M
(2022)
The far-infrared/radio correlation for a sample of strongly lensed dusty star-forming galaxies detected by Herschel
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Priestley F
(2023)
Line emission from filaments in molecular clouds
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Prole L
(2023)
From dark matter halos to pre-stellar cores: high resolution follow-up of cosmological Lyman-Werner simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Traficante A
(2023)
The SQUALO project (Star formation in QUiescent And Luminous Objects) I: clump-fed accretion mechanism in high-mass star-forming objects
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Lu A
(2024)
WISDOM project XX. - Strong shear tearing molecular clouds apart in NGC 524
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Hogarth L
(2024)
The ALMaQUEST Survey XIV: do radial molecular gas flows affect the star-forming ability of barred galaxies?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Chastenet J
(2022)
SOFIA/HAWC+ observations of the Crab Nebula: dust properties from polarized emission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Priestley F
(2024)
NEATH - III. A molecular line survey of a simulated star-forming cloud
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Medler K
(2022)
SN 2020acat: an energetic fast rising Type IIb supernova
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Ward B
(2024)
Little evolution of dust emissivity in bright infrared galaxies from 2 < z < 6
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Avison A
(2023)
Tracing Evolution in Massive Protostellar Objects - I. Fragmentation and emission properties of massive star-forming clumps in a luminosity-limited ALMA sample
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Williams T
(2023)
WISDOM Project - XVII. Beam-by-beam properties of the molecular gas in early-type galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Shaikh S
(2024)
Cosmology from cross-correlation of ACT-DR4 CMB lensing and DES-Y3 cosmic shear
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Hagimoto M
(2023)
Bright extragalactic ALMA redshift survey (BEARS) III: detailed study of emission lines from 71 Herschel targets
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Kirchschlager F
(2024)
From total destruction to complete survival: dust processing at different evolutionary stages in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Priestley F
(2023)
NEATH - II. N2H+ as a tracer of imminent star formation in quiescent high-density gas
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Rho J
(2023)
Far-infrared polarization of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A with SOFIA HAWC +
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Crowther P
(2024)
Oxygen abundance of ? Vel from [O iii ] 88 µm Herschel /PACS spectroscopy
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Matsuura M
(2022)
Spitzer and Herschel studies of dust in supernova remnants in the Small Magellanic Cloud
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Wesson R
(2024)
JWST observations of the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720): I. Imaging of the rings, globules, and arcs
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Ruffa I
(2022)
The AGN fuelling/feedback cycle in nearby radio galaxies - IV. Molecular gas conditions and jet-ISM interaction in NGC 3100
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Eales S
(2024)
The rise and fall of dust in the Universe
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society