UCL Astrophysics Consolidated Grant 2021-2024
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
The research we conduct in the UCL Astrophysics Group encompasses all the big questions of modern Astrophysics and on all scales, from exoplanets to the entire Universe. We have leading roles in large, international projects which are gathering data for millions of stars and galaxies. Our overall goals are to (1) analyse these data to answer fundamental questions about the Universe, (2) develop the theory and models that enable the interpretation for these data, and (3) produce the technologies making these state-of-the-art facilities a reality.
We propose a programme of ten science projects, divided in five themes covering the full range of topics studied within our group: Exoplanets, Galactic Astrophysics, Extragalactic Astrophysics, Cosmology and Instrumentation.
By the nature of our group, most of this work is observational; one of our keys to success is the close interaction between our instrumentation and science groups, allowing us direct access to large international projects. Our observational projects make use of facilities such as eMERLIN, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), and Euclid. With these facilities, we will study debris disks around white dwarf stars, the most massive stars in our Galaxy as well as some of the most massive galaxies in the early Universe, investigate the connection between galaxies and their dark matter halos, and answer fundamental questions in our cosmological model. We also propose two projects that are theoretical and numerical in nature, both concerned with the molecules that make up the atmospheres of exoplanets and the birth clouds of stars. In addition, we present an outreach case, designed to enable us to disseminate to the public the specific outputs of the research to be funded by this grant.
We propose a programme of ten science projects, divided in five themes covering the full range of topics studied within our group: Exoplanets, Galactic Astrophysics, Extragalactic Astrophysics, Cosmology and Instrumentation.
By the nature of our group, most of this work is observational; one of our keys to success is the close interaction between our instrumentation and science groups, allowing us direct access to large international projects. Our observational projects make use of facilities such as eMERLIN, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), and Euclid. With these facilities, we will study debris disks around white dwarf stars, the most massive stars in our Galaxy as well as some of the most massive galaxies in the early Universe, investigate the connection between galaxies and their dark matter halos, and answer fundamental questions in our cosmological model. We also propose two projects that are theoretical and numerical in nature, both concerned with the molecules that make up the atmospheres of exoplanets and the birth clouds of stars. In addition, we present an outreach case, designed to enable us to disseminate to the public the specific outputs of the research to be funded by this grant.
Planned Impact
Our Group will continue to develop its current Knowledge Exchange and Outreach programmes, to increase even further the impact of our STFC-funded research activities.
Our general outreach strategy has the support of our Ogden Science Officer and the UCL Widening Participation and Public Engagement teams. We also benefit from access to a unique facility, the UCL Observatory in Mill Hill (UCLO). We specifically target:
* our local community: We have strong ties with schools in the London boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Barnet (where UCLO is located) and offer them multiple opportunities to engage through trips to UCLO, large scale festival events such as Your Universe and Dark Matter Day, and targeted classroom visits.
* the next generation of scientists: We directly involve secondary school pupils in our research through our ORBYTS programme. The measured positive outcomes of this programme include an increase in the desire of young people to pursue scientific research as a career, and publications of the outcomes in scientific journals.
* the national scene: Group members routinely speak at large scale events across the country (e.g. New Scientist Scientist Live, Cheltenham Festival), feature on TV/Radio programmes (e.g. The Sky at Night), and write popular magazine articles and books, allowing us to disseminate our research outputs to large, diverse audiences
Our knowledge exchange activities have the professional support of UCL Business (for IP support) and UCL Enterprise (for entrepreneurship training, mentorship and access to venture capital). The transfer of the results of our innovation is being achieved as follows:
* by working with business to train the next generation of data scientists: we take advantage of our Astrophysical research to connect with businesses in need of Big-data infrastructure, as part of our STFC-funded doctoral training centre.
* by taking opportunities to commercialise our work: a start-up company Blue Skies Space Ltd (BSSL) has been formed by members of our group. BSSL employs an innovative commercial approach to create new opportunities for cutting-edge science, by enabling cost-effective, quickly-delivered scientific instruments for users worldwide through a service-based model.
* by contributing to the testing and design of new hardware and software solutions: Since January 2020 and for 4.5 years, our group is host the National Hub for the ExCALIBUR Hardware and Enabling Software Programme. This is both to support Exascale software design activities and to develop and test core technologies that will be used to design systems to solve both simulation and data Exascale-sized problems.
Our general outreach strategy has the support of our Ogden Science Officer and the UCL Widening Participation and Public Engagement teams. We also benefit from access to a unique facility, the UCL Observatory in Mill Hill (UCLO). We specifically target:
* our local community: We have strong ties with schools in the London boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Barnet (where UCLO is located) and offer them multiple opportunities to engage through trips to UCLO, large scale festival events such as Your Universe and Dark Matter Day, and targeted classroom visits.
* the next generation of scientists: We directly involve secondary school pupils in our research through our ORBYTS programme. The measured positive outcomes of this programme include an increase in the desire of young people to pursue scientific research as a career, and publications of the outcomes in scientific journals.
* the national scene: Group members routinely speak at large scale events across the country (e.g. New Scientist Scientist Live, Cheltenham Festival), feature on TV/Radio programmes (e.g. The Sky at Night), and write popular magazine articles and books, allowing us to disseminate our research outputs to large, diverse audiences
Our knowledge exchange activities have the professional support of UCL Business (for IP support) and UCL Enterprise (for entrepreneurship training, mentorship and access to venture capital). The transfer of the results of our innovation is being achieved as follows:
* by working with business to train the next generation of data scientists: we take advantage of our Astrophysical research to connect with businesses in need of Big-data infrastructure, as part of our STFC-funded doctoral training centre.
* by taking opportunities to commercialise our work: a start-up company Blue Skies Space Ltd (BSSL) has been formed by members of our group. BSSL employs an innovative commercial approach to create new opportunities for cutting-edge science, by enabling cost-effective, quickly-delivered scientific instruments for users worldwide through a service-based model.
* by contributing to the testing and design of new hardware and software solutions: Since January 2020 and for 4.5 years, our group is host the National Hub for the ExCALIBUR Hardware and Enabling Software Programme. This is both to support Exascale software design activities and to develop and test core technologies that will be used to design systems to solve both simulation and data Exascale-sized problems.
Organisations
- University College London (Lead Research Organisation)
- European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Collaboration)
- University of Orsay (Collaboration)
- University of Paris-Saclay (Collaboration)
- Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Collaboration)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- Cardiff University (Collaboration)
- UK Space Agency (Collaboration)
- KEK (Collaboration)
Publications
Amon A
(2023)
Consistent lensing and clustering in a low- S 8 Universe with BOSS, DES Year 3, HSC Year 1, and KiDS-1000
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bernard J
(2023)
Performance of the polarization leakage correction in the PILOT data
in Experimental Astronomy
Bhambra P
(2021)
Explaining deep learning of galaxy morphology with saliency mapping
Bhambra P
(2022)
Explaining deep learning of galaxy morphology with saliency mapping
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Burger P
(2023)
KiDS-1000 cosmology: Constraints from density split statistics
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Burger, Pierre A.
(2023)
KiDS-1000 cosmology: Constraints from density split statistics
Cuceu A
(2023)
Constraints on the Cosmic Expansion Rate at Redshift 2.3 from the Lyman-a Forest.
in Physical review letters
Cuceu A
(2023)
The Alcock-Paczynski effect from Lyman- a forest correlations: analysis validation with synthetic data
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Dark Energy Survey And Kilo-Degree Survey Collaboration
(2023)
DES Y3 + KiDS-1000: Consistent cosmology combining cosmic shear surveys
Dvornik A
(2023)
KiDS-1000: Combined halo-model cosmology constraints from galaxy abundance, galaxy clustering, and galaxy-galaxy lensing
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Fortuna M
(2021)
KiDS-1000: Constraints on the intrinsic alignment of luminous red galaxies
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Fuskeland U.
(2023)
Tensor-to-scalar ratio forecasts for extended LiteBIRD frequency configurations
in arXiv e-prints
Gerardi F
(2024)
Optimal data compression for Lyman-a forest cosmology
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gerardi F
(2023)
Direct cosmological inference from three-dimensional correlations of the Lyman a forest
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hasebe T
(2022)
Sensitivity Modeling for LiteBIRD
in Journal of Low Temperature Physics
Hubmayr J
(2022)
Optical Characterization of OMT-Coupled TES Bolometers for LiteBIRD
in Journal of Low Temperature Physics
Lamagna L.
(2021)
The optical design of the LiteBIRD Middle and High Frequency Telescope
in arXiv e-prints
Li S
(2023)
KiDS-1000: Cosmology with improved cosmic shear measurements
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lin K
(2023)
A simulation-based inference pipeline for cosmic shear with the Kilo-Degree Survey
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Loureiro A
(2022)
KiDS and Euclid : Cosmological implications of a pseudo angular power spectrum analysis of KiDS-1000 cosmic shear tomography
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Naidoo K
(2023)
Euclid : Calibrating photometric redshifts with spectroscopic cross-correlations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Piras D
(2023)
Fast and realistic large-scale structure from machine-learning-augmented random field simulations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Pyne S
(2022)
Three-point intrinsic alignments of dark matter haloes in the IllustrisTNG simulation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Sekimoto Y.
(2021)
Concept Design of Low Frequency Telescope for CMB B-mode Polarization satellite LiteBIRD
in arXiv e-prints
Shitvov A
(2022)
Broadband coated lens solutions for FIR-mm-wave instruments
Stölzner B
(2023)
Optimizing the shape of photometric redshift distributions with clustering cross-correlations
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Yao J
(2023)
KiDS-1000: Cross-correlation with Planck cosmic microwave background lensing and intrinsic alignment removal with self-calibration
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Description | BISOU - Balloon Experiment for Cosmic Microwave spectral distortion |
Organisation | University of Orsay |
Department | Space Astrophysics Institute |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have and continue to contribute to overall optical architecture, Fourier modulation analysis and mission operations concept. |
Collaborator Contribution | The partners are the lead organization for this activity. |
Impact | A few scientific papers on the mission concept and an ongoing Phase A study from CNRS. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Euclid |
Organisation | UK Space Agency |
Department | Euclid Consortium |
Country | France |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | Predictive pipeline for science performance of Euclid Justification of photometric redshift requirements Simulation tool for validation of Euclid data products |
Collaborator Contribution | full access to Euclid data |
Impact | ESA Space Mission to be launched in 2021 |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | KiDS |
Organisation | European Southern Observatory (ESO) |
Department | VST |
Country | Chile |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | infrastructure contributions to data analysis |
Collaborator Contribution | full data access to value-added weak lensing quality data analysis |
Impact | early data publications: public data release; refereed publications; press release |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Litebird Experiment |
Organisation | Cardiff University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | In this collaboration there are at present 80 institutes involved (see link to general paper below) I have added the lead institutes, my main activity partner in France and the other UK institutes. We are tasked to design and model the ground based tests for spectral and polarimetric performance of the High Frequency Telescope for Litebird (which will be conducted in France). This is achieved through modelling and simulation efforts of the instrument performance as designed. |
Collaborator Contribution | Litebird is the next generation Cosmic Microwave Background space satellite experiment for the measurement of the B-mode (considered to be the smoking gun of inflation in the first expansion phases of the Universe). It is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and involves a 3-continent consortium with Japan leading the overall project and building the Low Frequency Telescope, institutes in the US (led by Berkeley University) working on the detectors for both focal planes and a European Consortium providing the High Frequency Telescope. In the UK, the institutes currently involved are Cardiff University (leading the UK consortium), UCL and MSSL with a plan to expand the consortium as the experiment evolves. |
Impact | So far, five publications on the design of the experiment (at this early stage of the project) in an Astronomical Telescopes conference journal have been published. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Litebird Experiment |
Organisation | Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency |
Country | Japan |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | In this collaboration there are at present 80 institutes involved (see link to general paper below) I have added the lead institutes, my main activity partner in France and the other UK institutes. We are tasked to design and model the ground based tests for spectral and polarimetric performance of the High Frequency Telescope for Litebird (which will be conducted in France). This is achieved through modelling and simulation efforts of the instrument performance as designed. |
Collaborator Contribution | Litebird is the next generation Cosmic Microwave Background space satellite experiment for the measurement of the B-mode (considered to be the smoking gun of inflation in the first expansion phases of the Universe). It is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and involves a 3-continent consortium with Japan leading the overall project and building the Low Frequency Telescope, institutes in the US (led by Berkeley University) working on the detectors for both focal planes and a European Consortium providing the High Frequency Telescope. In the UK, the institutes currently involved are Cardiff University (leading the UK consortium), UCL and MSSL with a plan to expand the consortium as the experiment evolves. |
Impact | So far, five publications on the design of the experiment (at this early stage of the project) in an Astronomical Telescopes conference journal have been published. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Litebird Experiment |
Organisation | KEK |
Country | Japan |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | In this collaboration there are at present 80 institutes involved (see link to general paper below) I have added the lead institutes, my main activity partner in France and the other UK institutes. We are tasked to design and model the ground based tests for spectral and polarimetric performance of the High Frequency Telescope for Litebird (which will be conducted in France). This is achieved through modelling and simulation efforts of the instrument performance as designed. |
Collaborator Contribution | Litebird is the next generation Cosmic Microwave Background space satellite experiment for the measurement of the B-mode (considered to be the smoking gun of inflation in the first expansion phases of the Universe). It is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and involves a 3-continent consortium with Japan leading the overall project and building the Low Frequency Telescope, institutes in the US (led by Berkeley University) working on the detectors for both focal planes and a European Consortium providing the High Frequency Telescope. In the UK, the institutes currently involved are Cardiff University (leading the UK consortium), UCL and MSSL with a plan to expand the consortium as the experiment evolves. |
Impact | So far, five publications on the design of the experiment (at this early stage of the project) in an Astronomical Telescopes conference journal have been published. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Litebird Experiment |
Organisation | University College London |
Department | Department of Space and Climate Physics (MSSL) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | In this collaboration there are at present 80 institutes involved (see link to general paper below) I have added the lead institutes, my main activity partner in France and the other UK institutes. We are tasked to design and model the ground based tests for spectral and polarimetric performance of the High Frequency Telescope for Litebird (which will be conducted in France). This is achieved through modelling and simulation efforts of the instrument performance as designed. |
Collaborator Contribution | Litebird is the next generation Cosmic Microwave Background space satellite experiment for the measurement of the B-mode (considered to be the smoking gun of inflation in the first expansion phases of the Universe). It is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and involves a 3-continent consortium with Japan leading the overall project and building the Low Frequency Telescope, institutes in the US (led by Berkeley University) working on the detectors for both focal planes and a European Consortium providing the High Frequency Telescope. In the UK, the institutes currently involved are Cardiff University (leading the UK consortium), UCL and MSSL with a plan to expand the consortium as the experiment evolves. |
Impact | So far, five publications on the design of the experiment (at this early stage of the project) in an Astronomical Telescopes conference journal have been published. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Litebird Experiment |
Organisation | University of Paris-Saclay |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | In this collaboration there are at present 80 institutes involved (see link to general paper below) I have added the lead institutes, my main activity partner in France and the other UK institutes. We are tasked to design and model the ground based tests for spectral and polarimetric performance of the High Frequency Telescope for Litebird (which will be conducted in France). This is achieved through modelling and simulation efforts of the instrument performance as designed. |
Collaborator Contribution | Litebird is the next generation Cosmic Microwave Background space satellite experiment for the measurement of the B-mode (considered to be the smoking gun of inflation in the first expansion phases of the Universe). It is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and involves a 3-continent consortium with Japan leading the overall project and building the Low Frequency Telescope, institutes in the US (led by Berkeley University) working on the detectors for both focal planes and a European Consortium providing the High Frequency Telescope. In the UK, the institutes currently involved are Cardiff University (leading the UK consortium), UCL and MSSL with a plan to expand the consortium as the experiment evolves. |
Impact | So far, five publications on the design of the experiment (at this early stage of the project) in an Astronomical Telescopes conference journal have been published. |
Start Year | 2017 |