Physics Department News

Dr Xianguo Lu and Dr John Back have received funding from Science Technology and Facilities Council (STFC) for two PhD studentships for 3.5 years with top up funding provided by the University. The studentships will allow the students access to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), one of Europe’s largest multidisciplinary scientific research laboratories and the UK’s national centre for experimental particle physics.

The Particle Physics Department at RAL recruit 5-11 graduates every year, and each student is registered for a degree at a partner University.

Dr Back's project is titled "Physics studies for the Muon Collider target system" and the student will study and optimise the pion-to-muon production yields and radiation dose (energy deposition rates) for the target system that is being designed for the Muon Collider, which has great potential to be a future facility for high-energy physics research. The student would spend time both at Warwick and at RAL, working in partnership with Dr. Chris Densham's High Power Targets Group that is at the leading edge of target engineering, with the possibility of visits to CERN.

Dr Lu’s project is titled ‘Next-generation neutrino experiments in nuStorm’ and will evaluate and optimise the nuSTORM neutrino physics capabilities for processes in and beyond the Standard Model. The student would spend time both at Warwick and at the RAL with the possibility of long-term visits to CERN and working alongside physicists in the CERN neutrino group.

The positions will start in Autumn 2023. Applications are now open, with a deadline of 2^nd February. Find out more.

The Global Network On Sustainability In Space (GNOSIS) is a network funded by UKRI’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, aiming to promote, coordinate, and develop collaboration across the academic, defence, industrial, and political sectors to understand and solve problems relating to the sustainable use of space.

From November 30 – December 1, the Centre for Space Domain AwarenessLink opens in a new window hosted the GNOSIS Annual Conference 2022, “Space Sustainability for the Next Decade (and Beyond)”, co-sponsored by CGI and Astroscale.

Read more about the conference, hear from the organising committee as well as sponsors and attendees.

Dr Rebecca Nealon and Dr Farzana Meru from our Astronomy and Astrophysics group have been working with our outreach officer, Ally Caldecote to develop a new coding program for students aged 7-11. The aim of the program is to improve coding literacy and to inspire children to consider coding (and more broadly STEM) in their future, as well as empower teachers and parents to support children in their coding journey.

As a Stephen Hawking Fellowship holder, Rebecca has an outreach component which started the development of the new program. The program which is being run as a pilot with a local school involves 6 lessons, each of which contains a bit of Physics, some 'unplugged' coding exercises and self-led coding exercises. Named 'Coding with Sophie', the children use coding to help Sophie the Astronaut solve a bunch of problems to collect her rocket parts, build and launch the rocket, avoid asteroids, find the aliens, draw smoke patterns and fall into the black hole.

The team are aiming to offer this programme within more local primary schools, and eventually to send out the resources for teachers to run in the classes themselves. Rebecca tells us, "A major part of this program is to encourage more children to pursue coding and to engage them with physics problems. In our pilot study we have found that students enjoy this balance and really like applying the physics they have learnt in a coding framework."

The six week pilot program has just finished with capacity for school visits building from March 2023.

For more information, please contact Dr Rebecca NealonLink opens in a new window or Dr Farzana MeruLink opens in a new window.

Congratulations to our final year PhD student, Thomas Killestein who is an author on a paper titled 'The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black HoleLink opens in a new window' which has been published in Nature Astronomy.

Thomas tells us "The object itself is a black hole feeding on a star, and at peak was around 20 trillion times more luminous than that of our Sun, in an extreme example of astrophysics. the black hole is shredding a star similar to our own Sun, which forms a disc of material around the black hole, before ejecting material in jets at almost the speed of light, in one of the most energetic events ever seen."

The research has been undertaken by a global team, who conducted analysis of this newly discovered object across the electromagnetic spectrum. Thomas' focus was helping with ground-based infrared observations, remotely observing from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) New Technology Telescope (NTT) as part of the ePESSTO+ collaboration.

"While there are many theories as to what powers these energetic events, the vast energies of the jets seen in this system don't fit neatly into our understanding of the phenomena, so the puzzle continues. It's been amazing to be part of the research into this example of extreme astrophysics."