Support of the Astronomical Research in the Cavendish Astrophysics Group

卡文迪什天体物理学组天文学研究的支持

• 批准号: PP/D00117X/1
• 负责人: Anthony Lasenby
• 金额: $ 594.07万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2006 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=PP%2FD00117X%2F1
• 关键词: Support; Astronomical; Research; Cavendish; Astrophysics

This research is aimed at helping us understand and answer fundamental questions in cosmology and astrophysics. At the same time, novel experimental methods will be developed which can help answer future questions. We are interested in most of the main frontier questions in astrophysics. This includes: how did the universe get to be how it is? What were the processes that led to the development of structure in the universe?; what were the seed conditions that led to galaxies and clusters of galaxies existing today? We can study these questions by looking at the microwave background radiation, which contains imprints of structures in the very early universe, as well as effects from clusters of galaxies that are encountered along the way. By using data from recently developed telescopes, we can start looking also at the question of how galaxies, once formed, evolve, and crucially, what is the history of the stars that form in them as a function of time. We can do this both by looking far backwards into the universe, and by studying in detail what happens in our own galaxy. In all these areas, big advances come with the introduction of new techniques, and we want to continue to pioneer the application of a technique known as interferometry, which we developed for radioastronomy, but are also leading the introduction of into optical astronomy. This already gives angular resolving power better than the Hubble Space Telescope, and we wish to extend this so that we are sensitive to structures in extragalactic objects which have never been directly seen before. A further area of development is superconducting detectors for higher frequency observations. These promise to give great sensitivity, but also simplicity, since they could be manufactured on chips, just like computer circuits now. Being able to mass-produce them, promises very sensitive array detectors for the future, which could be employed to image astrophysical structures at early epochs, helping us again to decode the origin and evolution of structure in the universe.

这项研究旨在帮助我们理解和回答宇宙学和天体物理学中的基本问题。同时，将开发新的实验方法，帮助回答未来的问题。我们对天体物理学中的大多数主要前沿问题都感兴趣。这包括：宇宙是如何变成现在的样子的？导致宇宙结构发展的过程是什么？导致今天存在的星系和星系团的萌芽条件是什么？我们可以通过观察微波背景辐射来研究这些问题，其中包含非常早期宇宙结构的印记，以及沿途遇到的星系团的影响。通过使用最近开发的望远镜提供的数据，我们还可以开始研究星系一旦形成，如何演化的问题，最关键的是，在星系中形成的恒星的历史是如何随时间变化的。我们可以通过远回望宇宙和详细研究我们银河系发生的事情来做到这一点。在所有这些领域，随着新技术的引入而来的巨大进步，我们希望继续开创一种名为干涉测量的技术的应用，这是我们为射电天文学开发的，但也正在引领将其引入光学天文学。这已经提供了比哈勃太空望远镜更好的角度分辨率，我们希望扩展这一功能，以便我们对河外天体中以前从未直接看到的结构敏感。另一个开发领域是用于更高频率观测的超导探测器。它们承诺提供极高的灵敏度，但也很简单，因为它们可以在芯片上制造，就像现在的计算机电路一样。能够大规模生产它们，有望在未来使用非常灵敏的阵列探测器，可以用来成像早期的天体物理结构，帮助我们再次破译宇宙结构的起源和演化。