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
Ismail D.
(2023)
VizieR Online Data Catalog: z-GAL dust continuum properties (Ismail+, 2023)
in VizieR Online Data Catalog
Watts Adam B.
(2023)
VERTICO V: The environmentally driven evolution of the inner cold gas discs of Virgo cluster galaxies
in arXiv e-prints
Li Z
(2023)
The Simons Observatory: a new open-source power spectrum pipeline applied to the Planck legacy data
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Berta S
(2023)
z -GAL: A NOEMA spectroscopic redshift survey of bright Herschel galaxies III. Physical properties
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Leisawitz David
(2023)
The Space Interferometer for Cosmic Evolution (SPICE) Far-IR Probe
in American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
Mallaby-Kay M
(2023)
Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with ACT, DES, and BOSS: A novel hybrid estimator
in Physical Review D
Shimajiri Y
(2023)
Witnessing the fragmentation of a filament into prestellar cores in Orion B/NGC 2024
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Priestley F
(2023)
Differences in chemical evolution between isolated and embedded prestellar cores
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Shimajiri Y.
(2023)
Witnessing the fragmentation of a filament into prestellar cores in Orion B/NGC 2024
in arXiv e-prints
Muñoz-Echeverría M
(2023)
Multi-probe analysis of the galaxy cluster CL J1226.9+3332 Hydrostatic mass and hydrostatic-to-lensing bias
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Campeti P.
(2023)
LiteBIRD Science Goals and Forecasts. A Case Study of the Origin of Primordial Gravitational Waves using Large-Scale CMB Polarization
in arXiv e-prints
Wolz K.
(2023)
The Simons Observatory: pipeline comparison and validation for large-scale B-modes
in arXiv e-prints
Wiseman P.
(2023)
Multiwavelength observations of the extraordinary accretion event AT2021lwx
in arXiv e-prints
Chawner H.
(2023)
VizieR Online Data Catalog: Dusty supernova remnants in the Galactic plane (Chawner+, 2020)
in VizieR Online Data Catalog
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
Madhavacheril M
(2024)
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing Map and Cosmological Parameters
in The Astrophysical Journal
Coulton William R.
(2024)
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of Patchy Screening of the Cosmic Microwave Background
in arXiv e-prints
Faustino Vieira H
(2024)
Molecular clouds in M51 from high-resolution extinction mapping
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bouchet P.
(2024)
JWST MIRI Imager Observations of Supernova SN 1987A
in arXiv e-prints
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
Klaassen Pamela
(2024)
Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) Science: Our Galaxy
in arXiv e-prints
Zsíros S
(2024)
Serendipitous detection of the dusty Type IIL SN 1980K with JWST /MIRI
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
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
Prole L
(2024)
Population III star formation: multiple gas phases prevent the use of an equation of state at high densities
in The Open Journal of Astrophysics
Liu Daizhong
(2024)
Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) science: Gas and dust in nearby galaxies
in arXiv e-prints
Beuther H
(2024)
Density distributions, magnetic field structures, and fragmentation in high-mass star formation
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Liang F
(2024)
WISDOM project - XVIII. Molecular gas distributions and kinematics of three megamaser galaxies
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
Ward B
(2024)
Little evolution of dust emissivity in bright infrared galaxies from 2 < z < 6
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
Eales S
(2024)
The Rise and Fall of Dust in the Universe
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
Milisavljevic Dan
(2024)
A JWST Survey of the Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
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
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
Qu F
(2024)
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the DR6 CMB Lensing Power Spectrum and Its Implications for Structure Growth
in The Astrophysical Journal
Serjeant S
(2024)
An Upper Limit to Differential Magnification Effects in Strongly Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies
in Research Notes of the AAS
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
Prince Heather
(2024)
A foreground-marginalized 'BK-lite' likelihood for the tensor-to-scalar ratio
in arXiv e-prints
Bakx T
(2024)
FLASH: Faint Lenses from Associated Selection with Herschel
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kreisch C
(2024)
Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The persistence of neutrino self-interaction in cosmological measurements
in Physical Review D
Rigby A
(2024)
The dynamic centres of infrared-dark clouds and the formation of cores
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cox P
(2024)
z-GAL: A NOEMA spectroscopic redshift survey of bright Herschel galaxies I. Overview (Corrigendum)
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
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
Bing L. -J.
(2024)
Faint millimeter NIKA2 dusty star-forming galaxies: finding the high-redshift population
in arXiv e-prints