Science program

Our staff work across three primary science themes, as outlined.  These themes tie in directly to SKAO science drivers and working groups, with our staff and students possessing the necessary observational, theoretical and computational expertise to enable high-impact results in these fields.

Lead: Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker

The Galaxy

Our researchers primarily focus on compact stellar remnants such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, investigating their birth, evolution, and connections to observable phenomena such as pulsars, long-period radio transients, and X-ray binaries. We extensively use the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Western Australia to explore the radio universe. One major focus is conducting an MWA survey of the entire southern sky to detect new pulsars and study known systems, aiming to better understand how these exotic objects produce radio emission, and how they can be utilized to explore new vistas in physics and astrophysics. A further use is exploiting the MWA’s large field-of-view as a near-real-time radio transient monitor to explore elusive intermittent transients. Our group also makes use of large optical catalogues such as Gaia, and advanced radio telescopes such as MeerKAT, and VLBI networks.

Lead: Associate Professor Clancy James

The Nearby Universe

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are recently uncovered astrophysical phenomena; they are like cosmic fireworks – brief, yet incredibly powerful explosions that outshine almost everything else in the Universe. Their emissions are generated by matter under extreme conditions, whose properties probe physical regimes that far transcend the range achievable in terrestrial experiments, giving us a unique glimpse into the laws of physics. They make powerful probes to explore the Universe at sub-millisecond time resolution, and by studying how different radio frequencies within a burst are slowed down as they travel through the tenuous gas between galaxies, we can determine the density of that gas, which allows us to weigh the Universe, and perform key cosmological measurements. Our group also explores the nature and activity of extragalactic black holes across a range of wavelengths.

Lead: Professor Cathryn Trott

The High-redshift Universe

The High Redshift Universe project aims to untangle the evolution of the Universe during its first billion years, during the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionisation (EoR). This is achieved through observations of the redshifted hydrogen line signal, emitted by the neutral hydrogen gas that was present in abundance during this epoch. We also search for supermassive black holes that formed in the very early Universe, and use these as lighthouses to illuminate the hydrogen gas. Structural features of the formation of the first ionising sources during the EoR are traced by the neutral hydrogen gas signal. The spatial and temperature distribution of the hydrogen line observations allows us to probe this evolution, and explore the growth of structure during the Cosmic Dawn. Radio telescopes such as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and SKA-Low telescope, under construction in Western Australia, will play a key role in detecting this hydrogen line signal and understanding the mysteries of the early Universe.