Determining the Nature of Accreting and Explosive Radio Transients

Supervisors: Dr Deanne CoppejansLink opens in a new window and Dr Ingrid PelisoliLink opens in a new window

Astrophysical transients are sources that brighten and fade on timescales of sub-seconds up to years. In recent years, improvements in telescopes and search algorithms have led to the discovery of several new classes of transients – such as white dwarf pulsars, long period radio transients and luminous fast blue optical transients. Although progress has been made towards understanding what these objects are, we still have fundamental questions about their natures and physics. For example, what are the underlying sources behind these transient events? What are the emission mechanisms? Radio observations offer a unique view of these objects, as they probe the outflows (such as winds and jets from white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes), high-energy shocks and magnetic reconnection events. When used in combination with complementary multi-wavelength observations (X-ray, optical, UV) we can address these important outstanding questions.

The successful candidate will use radio and multi-wavelength observations from telescopes such as the Very Large Array (VLA), MeerKAT, Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO), the Thai National Telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to study the physics of newly discovered types of transients and understand their nature.