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
Katsioli S
(2022)
Exploring the millimetre emission in nearby galaxies: Analysis of the edge-on galaxy NGC 891
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Katsioli S.
(2023)
Exploring the interstellar medium of NGC 891 at millimeter wavelengths using the NIKA2 camera
in arXiv e-prints
Greaves J. S.
(2022)
Experiences of "Outsiderness" in Planetary Science
in Advancing IDEA in Planetary Science
Larsson Josefin
(2023)
Expanding shocks and the emergence of the compact object in Supernova 1987A
in HST Proposal
Wesson R
(2023)
Evidence for late-time dust formation in the ejecta of supernova SN 1995N from emission-line asymmetries
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Moriya T
(2022)
Euclid : Searching for pair-instability supernovae with the Deep Survey
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Zabel N
(2023)
Erratum: "VERTICO II: How H i-identified Environmental Mechanisms Affect the Molecular Gas in Cluster Galaxies" (2022, ApJ, 933, 10)
in The Astrophysical Journal
Jones O
(2023)
Ejecta, Rings, and Dust in SN 1987A with JWST MIRI/MRS
in The Astrophysical Journal
Niculescu-Duvaz M
(2022)
Dust masses for a large sample of core-collapse supernovae from optical emission line asymmetries: dust formation on 30-year time-scales
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ejlali G
(2022)
Dust Emission in Galaxies at Millimeter Wavelengths: Cooling of star forming regions in NGC6946
in EPJ Web of Conferences
Young L
(2022)
Down but Not Out: Properties of the Molecular Gas in the Stripped Virgo Cluster Early-type Galaxy NGC 4526
in The Astrophysical Journal
Priestley F
(2023)
Do simulated molecular clouds look like real ones?
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
Beuther H
(2024)
Density distributions, magnetic field structures, and fragmentation in high-mass star formation
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Einig L
(2023)
Deep learning denoising by dimension reduction: Application to the ORION-B line cubes
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Ritacco A
(2022)
Crab nebula at 260 GHz with the NIKA2 polarimeter: Implications for the polarization angle calibration of future CMB experiments
in EPJ Web of Conferences
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
Marques G
(2024)
Cosmological constraints from the tomography of DES-Y3 galaxies with CMB lensing from ACT DR4
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Glass D
(2022)
Cool interstellar medium as an evolutionary tracer in ALMA-observed local dusty early-type galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ejlali G.
(2023)
Constraining Millimeter Dust Emission in Nearby Galaxies with NIKA2: the case of NGC2146 and NGC2976
in arXiv e-prints
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
Lestrade J
(2022)
Candidate cosmic filament in the GJ526 field, mapped with the NIKA2 camera
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
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
Hagimoto M.
(2023)
Bright Extragalactic ALMA Redshift Survey (BEARS) III: Detailed study of emission lines from 71 Herschel targets
in arXiv e-prints
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
Wells M
(2022)
ATLASGAL - star forming efficiencies and the Galactic star formation rate
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Urquhart J
(2022)
ATLASGAL - evolutionary trends in high-mass star formation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Klaassen Pamela
(2024)
Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) Science: Our Galaxy
in arXiv e-prints
Liu Daizhong
(2024)
Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) science: Gas and dust in nearby galaxies
in arXiv e-prints
Kreisch C
(2024)
Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The persistence of neutrino self-interaction in cosmological measurements
in Physical Review D
Serjeant S
(2024)
An Upper Limit to Differential Magnification Effects in Strongly Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies
in Research Notes of the AAS
Wevers T
(2022)
An elliptical accretion disk following the tidal disruption event AT 2020zso
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Klitsch A
(2023)
ALMACAL - X. Constraints on molecular gas in the low-redshift circumgalactic medium
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Nony T.
(2023)
ALMA-IMF. VI. Prestellar and protostellar core populations in the W43 cloud complex
in arXiv e-prints
Pouteau Y
(2022)
ALMA-IMF III. Investigating the origin of stellar masses: top-heavy core mass function in the W43-MM2&MM3 mini-starburst
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Ginsburg A
(2022)
ALMA-IMF II. Investigating the origin of stellar masses: Continuum images and data processing
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Motte F
(2022)
ALMA-IMF I. Investigating the origin of stellar masses: Introduction to the Large Program and first results
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bonne L
(2022)
A potential new phase of massive star formation A luminous outflow cavity centred on an infrared quiet core
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Koch P
(2022)
A Multiscale Picture of the Magnetic Field and Gravity from a Large-scale Filamentary Envelope to Core-accreting Dust Lanes in the High-mass Star-forming Region W51
in The Astrophysical Journal
Moran S
(2023)
A long life of excess: The interacting transient SN 2017hcc
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Milisavljevic Dan
(2024)
A JWST Survey of the Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
in arXiv e-prints
Faustino Vieira H
(2023)
A high-resolution extinction mapping technique for face-on disc galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Prince Heather
(2024)
A foreground-marginalized 'BK-lite' likelihood for the tensor-to-scalar ratio
in arXiv e-prints
Charalampopoulos P
(2022)
A detailed spectroscopic study of tidal disruption events
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Jiménez-Donaire M
(2023)
A constant N 2 H + (1-0)-to-HCN (1-0) ratio on kiloparsec scales
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Omoruyi O
(2024)
"Beads-on-a-string" Star Formation Tied to One of the Most Powerful Active Galactic Nucleus Outbursts Observed in a Cool-core Galaxy Cluster
in The Astrophysical Journal