A Programme of Technology, Astrophysics and Cosmology in Cardiff, 2022-2025

天文学家试图回答一系列广泛的问题，从基本的问题，如恒星和星系是如何形成的，宇宙本身的结构和演化的问题，到关于天体中发生的物理和化学过程的更详细的问题。试图回答一些最重要问题的一个有力方法是在亚毫米波段进行观测，这是天文学的最新分支之一。例如，恒星和星系的诞生发生在巨大的气体和尘埃云中，而尘埃-星际空间中的微小固体碎片-隐藏了像哈勃太空望远镜这样的传统光学望远镜的诞生。然而，使用亚毫米望远镜，可以观察到来自尘埃本身的辐射，使天文学家能够观察恒星和星系生命的最早阶段。亚毫米天文学是我们在卡迪夫的专业之一，我们的团队既有使用亚毫米望远镜的天文学家，也有制造新型相机和其他在该波段工作的设备的科学家-这项技术在天文学之外也有许多用途。在这项提案中，我们要求英国纳税人提供资金来支持我们的研究。这项研究的大部分涉及使用或建造亚毫米仪器，但我们提出的一些项目将使用其他波段的望远镜或使用功能强大的计算机来模拟星星诞生或星系形成的过程。我们将试图回答的问题包括许多最重要的问题。关于像我们这样的行星，令人惊讶的事情之一是它们确实存在，因为星星周围厘米大小的固体块很可能在它们合并形成更大的块并最终形成行星之前就被摧毁了。我们将使用无线电观测在新形成的恒星周围的尘埃盘中寻找这种大小的块，目的是了解像我们这样的小岩石行星是如何形成的，在另一个项目中，我们将使用一个新的气球天文台来研究行星光谱的另一端-在附近恒星周围发现的巨大的“热彗星”。我们提出了几个项目来研究恒星的形成，包括今天在我们周围形成的恒星，以及天文学家认为在大爆炸之后形成的具有很少重元素的特殊恒星群，使用观测和计算机模拟的混合物。我们提出了两个研究超新星的项目，即大质量星星在其生命结束时坍塌时发生的巨大爆炸。一个项目将研究超新星爆炸中尘埃颗粒和分子气体的形成，另一个项目是最近发现的超亮超新星，比标准超新星亮100倍。再次使用观测和计算机模拟的混合物，我们提出了几个研究星系的项目，包括对最近的大星系仙女座星系的研究，对附近星系中心超大质量黑洞的调查，星系周围气体流动的计算机模拟，以及寻找更多非常遥远星系的例子的项目，我们在大爆炸后不久才看到的，并且被近距离星系的引力高度放大。这些高度放大的星系的更多例子是重要的，因为放大意味着我们可以非常详细地研究星系形成的方式。我们还提出了两个技术项目，一个是开发动力学电感探测器，一种我们小组在很大程度上发现的探测器，它使革命性的新仪器成为可能，另一个是进一步开发“超材料”，一种使仪器的新组件成为可能的材料，例如平面透镜，我们小组已经用来制造所有亚毫米望远镜的滤光片，在过去的30年里，在地面和太空中。

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.