Oxford Experimental Radio/mm Cosmology

Employment and PhD Opportunities

Jobs

We currently have no specific job advertisements, however we welcome informal enquiries from people who are interested in e.g. applying for fellowships to take up within our group. Please contact either Mike Jones or Ghassan Yassin

PhD Projects

C-BASS: the C-Band All-Sky Survey:

Prof Michael Jones and Dr Angela Taylor

One of the biggest challenges facing future measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and particularly its polarization, is the understanding and removal of foreground emission, which is dominated by synchrotron and dust emission in our Galaxy. This is likely to be the limiting factor in future experiments attempting to measure the B-mode polarization signal in the CMB in order to understand the physics of inflation. To improve our knowledge of the synchrotron component of the Galactic emission, we are making a survey of the entire sky at 5 GHz (C-band) in both intensity and polarization which will be by far the most sensitive survey at these wavelengths. The receiver for this survey has been build in Oxford and it will be deployed on telescopes in California and South Africa. By October 2009 the first (northern) survey will be starting, and during 2010 the receiver will be moved to South Africa for the southern survey. This is now an ideal time for a student to join the project in order to undertake the observations and data analysis. The student will take a leading role in analysing data, writing software tools to process and calibrate the data, assess systematic errors, and make modifications to the observing strategy as necessary. They will work closely with our collaborators at Caltech, Manchester and in South Africa and will spend some time at both observing sites, and will be involved in producing and publishing the final survey data products and scientific interpretation.

Future Sunyaev-Zel'dovich experiments

Dr Angela Taylor and Prof. Michael Jones

The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect is a unique way of looking at clusters of galaxies, the largest building-blocks of the universe. Instead of detection radiation emitted by the clusters, we see the cluster gas in silhouette against the cosmic microwave background, as the hot gas in the cluster scatters the radiation passing through it. The SZ effect has the unique property that its surface brightness is independent of redshift, making it an important tool for both cosmology and astrophysics. Several experiments around the world are currently making surveys of clusters using the SZ effect. The distinct spectral distortion carries important information about the cluster physics, but to fully exploit this we need to make sensitive measurements over a very wide range of frequencies, from around 30 GHz to over 250 GHz. We are currently planning, with colleagues in the UK and the USA, a new experiment which will make detailed images of the SZ effect over this full range of frequencies. This will require a range of new or substantially improved technologies, including wide-band RF components, correlators, antennas and receivers, as well as careful design of the experiment and new data analysis techniques. We have data in hand from our current SZ experiment, the Cosmic Background Imager, and are expecting to have data soon from our new prototype 220 GHz SZ interferometer, GUBBINS. We are looking for a student who can contribute to either or both of the hardware development, and the simulation and analysis software.

Scientific analysis of the Clover experiment

Prof. Pedro Ferreira and Prof. Michael Jones

One of the most important experimental goals in cosmology is to measure the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background, which encodes information about the physics of the epoch of inflation. The Clover experiment is designed to measure the B-mode of the cosmic microwave background, and is expected to be deployed to its observing site in the Atacama desert in Chile towards the end of 2009. We would like a student to become closely involved in the initial observing and data analysis programme. Depending on the inclinations of the student, the work could concentrate on pure data analysis techniques, or commissioning, operations and observing techniques, or a combination of the two. We wish to develop some of the scientific analysis tools for the first year of data, in particular for parameter estimation, non-gaussian analysis and cross correlation with foreground templates. We also need to develop tools for calibration, data quality monitoring, searching for an eliminating systematic effects such as ground pick-up and other scan-synchronous signals, and analysing and refining the observing strategy of the instrument.

Building the Square Kilometre Array

Prof. Michael Jones

Radio astronomers around the world are currently designing the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be by far the biggest radio telescope ever built, and which will transform many areas in astrophysics and cosmology. This globalproject will soon be based in the UK, and Oxford is playing a leading role in the design and development of the SKA. The student will have the opportunity to work on the prototype systems that are being built in the UK over the next few years, and there is a strong possibility of getting involved with one of the international pathfinder projects such as MeerKAT in South Africa. Depending on the interests and aptitudes of the student, they might work on hardware design, software development, integration and testing of prototypes and demonstrators, or some combination of these.