Support of the Astronomical Research in the Cavendish Astrophysics Group

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。与此同时，将开发新的实验方法，以帮助回答未来的问题。我们对天体物理学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这个样子的？导致宇宙结构发展的过程是什么？是什么样的种子条件导致了今天的星系和星系团的存在？我们可以通过观察微波背景辐射来研究这些问题，微波背景辐射包含了早期宇宙结构的印记，以及沿着遇到的星系团的影响。通过使用最近开发的望远镜的数据，我们也可以开始研究星系一旦形成，如何演变的问题，以及至关重要的是，作为时间的函数，在其中形成的恒星的历史是什么。我们可以通过回顾遥远的宇宙和详细研究我们银河系中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，取得了很大的进步，我们希望继续开拓一种称为干涉测量的技术的应用，我们为射电天文学开发了这种技术，但也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分辨能力，我们希望扩展这一点，以便我们对以前从未直接看到过的河外天体的结构敏感。另一个发展领域是用于更高频率观测的超导探测器。这些有望提供极高的灵敏度，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，为未来提供了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，帮助我们再次解码宇宙结构的起源和演变。

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.