Gamma-ray astronomy
Gamma-rays (photons with energy more than a million times that of visible light) provide us with a probe of high energy universe and in particular with information on the acceleration and propagation of ultra-relativistic particles - an important constituent of our own and other galaxies. The field of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy is currently in a period of rapid progress with many major new results published by the H.E.S.S. collaboration within the last few years. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Design Study is the first step towards building an instrument ten times more sensitive than H.E.S.S.
For a review of the status of the field see the article by myself and Werner Hofmann on TeV Astronomy in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
I was recently interviewed for the JodCast.
Me
I have been working in the field of astroparticle physics for about a decade on a series of cosmic ray and gamma-ray experiments: SPASE, Haverah Park, the Pierre Auger Observatory, STACEE, VERITAS and H.E.S.S., at the University of Leeds, the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago and at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. At the 2005 International Cosmic Ray Conference I became the 11th recipient of the Shakti P. Duggal Award. I now hold an STFC Advanced Fellowship in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Leeds. In 2007 I was awarded the Nuclear and Particle Physics Division Prize of the Institute of Physics for my work on the gamma-ray emission of the Galactic Centre.
I am currently the co-convenor of the working group on Supernova Remnants, Pulsars and Plerions in H.E.S.S. and the coordinator of the CTA working group for array simulations.
My work has been published in Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, New Astronomy Reviews, the New Journal of Physics, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, the Astrophysical Journal, the Astronomical Journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Annual Review of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Nature and Science.
In my spare time I climb.
Local Project Pages (password protected)
H.E.S.S. Leeds
H.E.S.S. Supernova Remnant, Pulsar and Plerion Working Group
HESS J0632+057 Multiwavelength Project
International Space Science Institute UHECR/Gamma-ray Team (public page here)
Selected recent pre-prints
The radio counterpart of the likely TeV binary HESS J0632+057
H.E.S.S. observations of massive stellar clusters
Identifying Nearby UHECR Accelerators using UHE (and VHE) Photons
Monte-Carlo studies of the angular resolution of a future Cherenkov gamma-ray telescope