Astrophysics Projects for potential students

 

Ray Norris

 

26 April 2012

 

 

Enrolment and Funding for PhD students

CSIRO is not a University, so my students are enrolled at a University, and co-supervised by a University supervisor and me. In some cases this is a true collaboration involving the student and both supervisors, and in some cases the University supervisor's role is simply to ensure that the student is making good progress, and to act as a link to the University.

 

If I am your co-supervisor, then you will normally be eligible for a "CASS graduate student research scholarship" which gives you

  • training in the use of the Australia Telescope Compact Array, and the opportunity to be Duty Astronomer. This looks really good on your CV when you apply for jobs, and also gives you the opportunity to meet other astronomers. Many students end up being invited to join projects that they help out with.

  • Free accommodation at CASS facilities when you visit Sydney or observe at a CASS observatory (e.g. Narrabri & Parkes)

  • For Australian students, up to $5000 for overseas travel during the course of your PhD

For details of CASS scholarships, see http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/graduate/scholars.html

 

You need to have a first-class honours degree or equivalent to have a good chance of funding, although funding is sometimes available for people with a 2.1

 

If you are an Australian student, you should apply for funding though your chosen University, or, if you haven't yet chosen a University for your funding, talk to me for suggestions.

 

If you are enrolled for a PhD at a non-Australian University, then, if your University supervisor agrees, co-supervision is encouraged if you are interested in the projects listed here.  It is also possible to do a PhD jointly through a co-tutelle agreement between your University and (e.g.) Macquarie University. In this case you are jointly funded and supervised by the two Universities, and spend part of your time in each University. See  http://www.international.mq.edu.au/research/cotutelles

 

If you are currently overseas, have a first-class honours degree, and would like to come to Australia to do your PhD, there are a few options for funding. In each case, applications must be submitted through the University, so the first step is to decide on a University and University co-supervisor.

 

 

 

PhD Projects

The suggested PhD projects below are within the ATLAS and EMU projects. Feel free to suggest a project not listed here if it falls in the same general area.

 

EMU is a large project that will use the new ASKAP telescope, starting in 2013, to make a census of radio sources in the sky. Most of these radio sources will be galaxies millions of light years away, many containing massive black holes, and some of the signals we detect will have been sent less than half a billion years after the Big Bang, which created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago. The reason for doing this is to try to understand how the stars and galaxies were first formed, and how they evolved to their present state, where planets and people are formed. The idea of doing this census is so that we can catch galaxies in all their different stages of evolution, and try to place them in sequence, and so study how their properties change as they evolve. See askap.pbworks.com for more general information, and http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.3219 for a detailed project description.

 

ATLAS (Australia Telescope Large Area Survey) is a pre-cursor to EMU, and uses a combination of radio, infrared, and optical observations to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. Over the last few years we have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to observe the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) and European Large Area ISO Survey - South 1 (ELAIS-S1) regions, with the aim of producing the widest (6 square degrees) deep (10-15 μJy rms) radio survey ever attempted. The survey areas were chosen to cover the Southern SWIRE fields, which have deep optical, near-infrared, and far-infrared (and in some parts of the field, deep X-ray) data, so that this combined SWIRE/ATLAS survey may be the most comprehensive multi-wavelength survey yet attempted. The radio observations are important because they penetrate the heavy dust extinction which is found in the most active galaxies at all redshifts, and are particularly effective at detecting AGN buried within dusty galaxies. See http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/deep/index.html for more information. EMU will have a similar sensitivity and resolution to ATLAS, so, as well as the original astrophysical goals, ATLAS has become a test bed for EMU.

 

Example Projects (many other projects are also possible)

Project 1: An independent measure of cosmic star formation

 

Goal: Measure cosmic star formation rates as a function of redshift. This will enable you to understand how cosmic star formation changes as a function of galaxy mass over the redshift range 0-1, and so help understand the process of galaxy evolution of the second half of the lifetime of the Universe.

 

Details: Use the new ATLAS data (DR3) to measure radio luminosity as an extinction-independent measure of global star formation over cosmic time. Separate AGN from SF galaxies using several indicators, and use spec-z and photo-z to plot the Madau diagram for different mass ranges of galaxy. This should result in several key papers, and prepare the way for even larger studies with EMU.

 

Project 2: Understanding the evolution of massive black holes

 

Goal: Measure source counts and luminosity functions for AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei = Galaxies containing massive black holes) using the ATLAS DR3 data. This will be the first time that anybody has been able to do this on a complete sample of this size reaching down to low-luminosity AGN, and will enable you to see how black hole activity has changed over cosmic time, and explore how it influences galaxy evolution and regulates star formation.

 

Details: Use the new ATLAS data (DR3) to separate AGN from SF galaxies using several indicators, and use spec-z to measure RLF for different types of galaxy (e.g. FRI, FRII, CSS/GPS, WAT, etc) in different z bins, and compare with SF rates from IR data. This should result in several key papers, and prepare the way for even larger studies with EMU.

 

Project 3: Measuring Dark Energy and Modified General Relativity with EMU

 

Goal: We expect EMU to be able to make fundamental advances in measuring the parameters of Dark Energy, which may pin down its cause, and also look for deviations from standard general relativity. This PhD project will be to model these measurements in detail, before EMU makes the measurement, and then, depending on timescale, participate in the actual measurement. See http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.3219 for an overview of EMU, including this project.

 

Details: Starting with the modelling by Raccanelli et al. (http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1108.0930v1 ), this project will model the EMU measurements in detail, understanding the assumptions and effects that could bias the answer. Where possible, existing data, such as ATLAS and COSMOS, will be used to constrain the modelling. The project will result in papers that will define the next generation of cosmological measurements by large radio surveys such as EMU, and will pave the way for the measurement itself, which will occur towards the end of the PhD project. This will position the PhD student to be in an excellent position to apply for postdoc positions to use radio surveys to define Dark Energy and modified Gravity.

 

 

 

 

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