Support of the Astronomical Research of the Cavendish Astrophysics Group

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The Cavendish Astrophysics (CA) group has a strong emphasis on experimental and observational astrophysics, backed by fundamental theoretical work and substantial expertise in data analysis. This consolidated grant application focuses on scientific exploitation, particularly of those instruments and facilities in which we have played a major role in their development. We also propose an exciting new blue-skies instrumentation programme.Our scientific programme in this consolidated grant application is built around the following four areas:(1) Star formation and evolution in our own and nearby galaxies, exploiting ground-breaking new facilities in ALMA and SCUBA-2, and developments in visible and near-infrared interferometry. Our research will cover multiple spatial scales, from AU scales characterising the processes and products of star formation, through parsec scales investigating clouds and filaments where star formation occurs, to the largest scales of star formation in nearby galaxies.(2) The development of a test-bed for a new generation of near-infrared array detectors that promise both read-noise and read-rate improvements of factors of 5-10 over existing devices. This will allow us to test the characteristics of these arrays that are critical to their performance in interferometric applications, and place us in an unrivalled position to propose new high-sensitivity instrumentation based on these arrays for ELTs and long-baseline infrared interferometers.(3) An ambitious and timely programme of experimental cosmology that will address themes of structure formation, the evolution of baryonic gas during galaxy assembly, the tensor-to-scalar ratio during inflation, and the interplay of magnetic field and gas in the intra-cluster medium. We are superbly placed to exploit data from ALMA, AMI, EVLA, Planck and SKA pathfinders to achieve our science aims in these areas. This will capitalise on our expertise in radio and CMB observations, theoretical modelling and data analysis; in addition we have collaborations in place which will give us access to complementary data sets in other wavebands.(4) Modelling the generation, propagation and detection of gravitational waves (GW) through the proper general-relativistic description of the energy and momentum carried by GW, and the development and application to real data of Bayesian methods for detecting GW signatures in laser-interferometer experiments such as LIGO and LISA.