A collaboration of nuclear physicists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Liverpool, and mechanical engineers from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have designed a vacuum chamber for use in nuclear and atomic physics experiments.
The camber, known as CARME (CRYRING Array for Reaction Measurements), is unique in that it can work in extremely high vacuum conditions. The camber has been produced for CRYRING – a heavy ion storage ring at the Facility for Antiproton Research (FAIR) in Germany.
Experiments with CARME
CARME will initially be used for detecting charged particles for nuclear astrophysics experiments. Elements heavier than helium are created by nuclear reactions taking place in stars. Nuclear astrophysics aims to study these key nuclear reactions to understand the origin of the elements.
In stellar explosions such as novae and supernovae, nuclear reactions involving short-lived radioactive isotopes play a key role in the synthesis of new elements. Producing these radioisotopes in Earth-based laboratories is a major challenge. CRYRING at FAIR offers the unique possibility to recreate the conditions in which nuclear reactions occur in stellar explosions, such as novae and supernovae, using pure beams of radioisotopes inaccessible elsewhere in the world.
The first experiment approved for CARME will be led by Dr Carlo Bruno from the School’s Nuclear Physics research group, and will aim at improving our understanding of the expected composition of cosmic dust formed in nova explosions.
Whilst the initial focus will be on detecting charged particles, CARME is special in that it will also be able to detect gamma rays and X-rays, making it very flexible. In the longer term this will be advantageous because to mount/unmount a system like this is very time consuming, not least because when you break the vacuum it can take weeks or months to recover those specific conditions.
Creating CARME
In order to create CARME, the scientists and engineers had to calculate the number of pumps required to reach extremely high vacuum (XHV) and find the necessary space inside the chamber to make it pump at the required speed. They then created a complete set of construction specifications, from mechanical requirements to what material to weld CARME.
When it came to building CARME’s vessels, they were manufactured in the UK and delivered back to the lab. Each element had to be dismounted, cleaned, fired to high temperatures, rebuilt and then checked for leaks. Finally, before being carefully packaged for delivery to Germany, CARME was re-assembled and tested.
Image gallery
Professor Alexander Morozov’s New Horizons funding will examine phenomena in the microbial world to enrich our understanding of non-equilibrium physics.
New Horizons is a ground-breaking new programme designed to support adventurous, high-risk research in mathematical sciences and physical sciences, with grants of up to £200,000 covering a maximum of two years’ work.
Lattice Models of Bacterial Turbulence
Professor Alexander Morozov has received such funds to study bacterial turbulence to better understand non-equilibrium physics.
Studies of the behaviour of fish, flocks or birds or insects has transformed our understanding of animal behaviour, biology of groups of organisms, and social interactions. Surprisingly, such phenomena have had a strong impact on statistical and soft matter physics by stimulating the development of what is now called the field of active matter. In the attempt to distil what aspects of such collective behaviour can be attributed to physical interactions, a new direction in non-equilibrium physics emerged that seeks to understand the unique states of matter formed by particles that extract energy from their environment and transform it into self-propulsion.
Professor Morozov’s project will focus on dilute solutions of swimming bacteria - an archetypal model for swimming microorganisms. Such solutions often exhibit a unique dynamical state, known as "bacterial turbulence".
Professor Morozov said:
At very low densities, bacterial suspensions appear featureless and disordered, while at higher, yet still sufficiently low densities, collective motion sets in on the scale of the system. We propose a high-risk, high-gain research programme that will establish a novel class of lattice models describing collective motion in microscopic self-propelled particles suspended in a fluid. Similar in spirit to other non-equilibrium lattice models, our model is simple enough to allow for detailed studies into the exact nature of collective motion.
If successful, the model will gain the status similar to, say, the Ising model in condensed matter physics, and will establish itself as a new archetypal class of active matter systems, ultimately enriching the understanding of non-equilibrium physics and fascinating collective phenomena in nature.
New Horizons
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has allocated almost £25.5 million of funding to 126 adventurous projects in the mathematical and physical sciences through this pilot programme.
Science Minister Amanda Solloway said:
It is critical we give the UK’s best researchers the resources to drive forward their revolutionary ideas so they can focus on identifying solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges, such as climate change. This government funding will allow some of our brightest mathematicians and physicists to channel all their creative ingenuity into achieving potentially life-changing scientific breakthroughs – from mathematics informing how we save our rainforests to robotics that will help track cancer faster.
The School has achieved an excellent outcome in the latest round of grants awarded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Astronomy Grants Panel.
The new Astronomy and Astrophysics Consolidated Grant, led by Professor Philip Best, will support 11 theoretically and observationally-focussed postdoctoral researchers at the Institute for Astronomy from April 2021, on research topics ranging from exoplanet studies to cosmology. This is an increase of funding from seven researchers, which was received at the last submission three years ago.
Support for two further postdoctoral researchers in solar system and planetary science was successful through the Astrobiology-focussed Consolidated Grant led by Professor Charles Cockell. These two grants were complemented by a successful Consortium Grant in Nuclear Astrophysics, with Edinburgh-lead Professor Alex Murphy.
Combined, these grants represent a success rate of just over 60% for Edinburgh researchers, roughly double the national average of 30%.
Dr Jean-Christophe Denis received an External Engagement and Impact Award from the School of Biological Sciences in December 2020 for engagement work he undertook last year.
He was involved in the delivery of boxes containing science experiments to around 2000 children in the Craigmillar, Moredun and Gilmerton areas of Edinburgh. He also helped run weekly online science clubs during the school term, providing all the necessary equipment and running online live sessions to pupils from six primary schools in the same area.
Dr Jean-Christophe Denis (or JC as he is known) is the School’s Ogden Outreach Officer, and he received the award alongside Dr Janet Paterson, Public Engagement Officer at the School of Biological Sciences, and Dr Cathy Southworth, Community Engagement Manager at the Bioquarter who were also involved in the work.
Dr JC Denis commented:
Having worked closely with the Craigmillar and Moredun communities over the past year, I felt it was vital to maintain our relationships despite the challenging conditions, and to support pupils and their families during a tough year. Together with Cathy and Janet, we decided to provide science kits to all primary school aged children in the area, an initiative which met a lot of success and enthusiasm from children, parents and schools alike. We then offered online live science clubs to pupils in these communities. We originally feared it would not be an effective way to deliver science and build relationships, but it ran very smoothly and the children enjoyed the sessions very much, and clearly built their enthusiasm for science further. This success is largely due to the Physics undergraduate students, Annabelle Avery and Cristina Cortes, who led these online session, and to whom I am extremely grateful.
2020 is the first year the School of Biological Sciences has granted External Engagement and Impact Awards. Dr JC Denis said:
I am very grateful and honoured to have received this Award alongside my colleagues Cathy and Janet. 2020 has been a very challenging year for Public Engagement and Outreach, as we have had to totally change the way we work, so it was heart-warming to receive such an Award in recognition for our work in these difficult times.
The School has announced the student recipients of medals and awards at an online ceremony.
Congratulations to students who received medals, certificates, prizes and scholarships at the School of Physics & Astronomy online Undergraduate Student Awards Ceremony.
The Head of School, Prof Jim Dunlop, announced the awards in recognition of excellent performance and achievements in the last academic year. Joint winners of the John Laing Scholarship, Ioannis Hadjifrangiskou and Marios Giannakou, provided some motivational and welcoming words.
Certificates & Medals
181 pre-honours students received Certificates of Merit for their achievement in Physics and Mathematical Physics courses in years 1 & 2. A total of 29 Class Medals were awarded to the students with the highest overall mark for their degree programme.
Prizes and Scholarships
17 Prizes and Scholarships were awarded. These are awarded to the undergraduate students who have achieved the highest results and in their subject area.
Congratulations to Graham Brown (MPhys Mathematical Physics) who won the Tait Prize, the Tait Medal and the Mathematical Physics Integrated Master Medal.
Prize recipients also include the following who have completed their BSc degree:
Ramsay Prize (highest degree classification - BSc Astrophysics): Michael Sharp
Schlapp Prize (highest degree classification - BSc Mathematical Physics): Christos Kourris
Margarett Ann Stewart Prize (highest degree classification - BSc Theoretical Physics / BSc Computational Physics ): Tommaso Bruggi (BSc Theoretical Physics)
Neil Arnott Prize (highest degree classification - BSc Physics programme area) – Nicholas Conceicao (BSc Physics and Music)
Prize recipients include the following who have completed their MPhys degree:
Emerson Prize (highest degree classification - MPhys Astrophysics): Sean Johnston
Dewar & Ritchie Prize (highest degree classification - MPhys Theoretical Physics / MPhys Computational Physics): Scott Conn (MPhys Theoretical Physics)
Neil Arnott Prize (highest degree classification - MPhys Physics programme area): Chin Yi Tan (MPhys Physics)
Many congratulations to all recipients.
It had been proposed that merging black holes observed with gravitational waves formed not from dying stars but in the very earliest moments of our Universe. However, a new analysis has provided evidence against this hypothesis and the possibility that dark matter consists entirely of ‘primordial’ black holes.
All matter was created in the first few moments following the Big Bang. It has long been speculated that black holes, extremely dense regions of space with a gravitational pull so strong not even light can escape, could also have formed in this primordial maelstrom. These primordial black holes may hold the solution to the ‘dark matter’ problem of astronomy, providing an invisible source of gravity throughout space and time.
Black holes can also form when massive stars collapse under their own weight at the end of their life. Astronomers expect that the Universe contains a large population of these ‘stellar’ black holes, which until recently could not be observed directly. The new field of gravitational wave astronomy has given us a unique new window onto the physics of black holes.
The first direct detection of gravitational waves was made in September 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo observatory. These waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time, emitted by a pair of black holes spiralling into each other and eventually merging to form one large black hole. The waves travel across space unimpeded and can be detected on Earth with highly sensitive detectors.
A recent study led by a University of Edinburgh researcher has used measurements of black hole masses from LIGO-Virgo to test the primordial or stellar origin of these gravitational wave sources. The team used advanced statistical techniques to confront different predictions for the observed masses against the data, comparing scenarios in which all sources are either primordial or stellar black holes. They found that a model in which all black holes were primordial failed to match the detailed shape of the black hole mass distribution, with simple stellar merger predictions strongly favoured.
As a by-product of their analysis, the team was also able to rule out 100% of the dark matter being primordial black holes, with such a model producing many more merger events than observed. The new study instead limits this fraction to at most 7%. This result suggests that dark matter must be a new particle or force not predicted by standard physics.
Dr Alex Hall, a Senior Research Associate in the School of Physics and Astronomy who led the study, said:
Our results are strong evidence against all of the observed merging black holes being primordial in origin, and instead suggest that at least some of the sources must be the stellar black holes of standard astrophysics. Our work also demonstrates the remarkable power of this new data set when analysed within a rigorous statistical framework. With hundreds of new detections expected in the next few years, the potential of using gravitational waves to study the physics of the early Universe is extremely exciting.
The study has been published in Physical Review D.
An international research team have discovered an exotic binary system composed of two young planet-like objects, orbiting around each other from a very large distance. Although these objects look like giant exoplanets, they formed in the same way as stars, proving that the mechanisms driving star formation can produce rogue worlds in unusual systems deprived of a Sun.
Star-forming processes sometimes create mysterious astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are smaller and colder than stars, and can have masses and temperatures down to those of exoplanets in the most extreme cases. Just like stars, brown dwarfs often wander alone through space, but can also be seen in binary systems, where two brown dwarfs orbit one another and travel together in the galaxy.
The research was led by Clémence Fontanive from the University of Bern (who completed her PhD at the School’s Institute for Astronomy in 2019), Prof Beth Biller from the School’s Institute for Astronomy and scientists from Bucknell University.
They discovered a curious starless binary system of brown dwarfs. The system CFHTWIR-Oph 98 (or Oph 98 for short) consists of the two very low-mass objects Oph 98 A and Oph 98 B. It is located 450 light years away from Earth in the stellar association Ophiuchus. The researchers were surprised by the fact that Oph 98 A and B are orbiting each other from a strikingly large distance, about 5 times the distance between Pluto and the Sun, which corresponds to 200 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The study has just been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Extremely low masses and a very large separation
The pair is a rare example of two objects similar in many aspects to extra-solar giant planets, orbiting around each other with no parent star. The more massive component, Oph 98 A, is a young brown dwarf with a mass of 15 times that of Jupiter, which is almost exactly on the boundary separating brown dwarfs from planets. Its companion, Oph 98 B, is only 8 times heavier than Jupiter. Components of binary systems are tied by an invisible link called gravitational binding energy, and this bond gets stronger when objects are more massive or closer to one another. With extremely low masses and a very large separation, Oph 98 has the weakest binding energy of any binary system known to date.
Discovery thanks to data from Hubble
Researchers discovered the companion to Oph 98 A using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Brown dwarfs are only visible in infrared light. This is because they are very cold and emit very little light, and the stellar association in which the binary is located, Ophiuchus, is embedded in a dense, dusty cloud which scatters visible light.
Because brown dwarfs are cold enough, water vapor forms in their atmospheres, creating prominent features in the infrared that are commonly used to identify brown dwarfs. However, these water signatures cannot be easily detected from the surface of the Earth. Located above the atmosphere in the vacuum of space, Hubble allows to probe the existence of water vapor in astronomical objects.
An atypical result of star formation
The Oph 98 binary system formed only 3 million years ago in the nearby Ophiuchus stellar nursery, making it a newborn on astronomical timescales. The age of the system is much shorter than the typical time needed to build planets. Brown dwarfs like Oph 98 A are formed by the same mechanisms as stars. Despite Oph 98 B being the right size for a planet, the host Oph 98 A is too small to have a sufficiently large reservoir of material to build a planet that big. Therefore Oph 98 B, like its host, must have formed through the same mechanisms that produce stars.
Image gallery
Congratulations to Dr Stewart McWilliams who has been awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant.
The European Research Council (ERC) awards consolidator grants each year to mid-career researchers who want to consolidate their independence by establishing a research team and continuing to develop a successful career. Funding will create jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff working in the grantees' research team, and enable grant recipients to tackle some of the current big scientific questions.
Dr Stewart McWilliams has been successful in receiving a consolidator grant to support his research in Transport in the Interior of the Earth from Modelling and Experiments.
Stewart studies high pressure and high temperature states of matter in the laboratory to address questions of scientific and technological interest. He is interested in materials relevant to natural systems such as planetary interiors and to technologies such as energetic materials and inertial confinement fusion. He works on developing and using ultrafast methods to create, sustain, and study extreme states. These techniques use the diamond-anvil cell (static compression) and laser-driven shock compression (dynamic compression) to generate particular extreme states. Stewart is based in the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, and is part of the University’s Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions.
The 327 laureates awarded the 2020 ERC Consolidator Grants will carry out their projects at universities, research centres and companies in 23 different countries across Europe, including 50 projects in the United Kingdom. The funding, worth in total €655 million, is part of the EU’s current research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
Congratulations to Prof Sinead Farrington who is named 2021 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering
The Blavatnik Awards recognize and support outstanding young scientists and engineers. Talented young academic staff across the UK are nominated by their university or research institution, or by members of the Blavatnik Awards UK Scientific Advisory Council.
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom celebrate the past accomplishments and future potential of the UK’s most innovative young faculty-rank (academic staff) scientists and engineers working in the three disciplinary categories of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry. The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK are generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and independently administered by the New York Academy of Sciences.
Prof Farrington is based in the School’s Particle Physics Experiment research group and she works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. She received the Blavatnik Award in recognition of her leadership of an international working group at CERN that has improved our understanding of the properties of the Higgs boson, and the development of key trigger and analysis techniques for the exploitation of Large Hadron Collider data and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
Prof Farrington commented:
High energy physics is a collaborative endeavour involving very talented individuals from around the world, working together to build machines on a grand scale, and to analyse the data they generate to help us understand how the universe works at its deepest levels. I am privileged to have been able to contribute to this endeavour and to help provide some pieces of nature’s great puzzle, and am honoured to have received this Blavatnik Award.
The 2021 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Laureates and Finalists will be honoured at an awards ceremony in London in June 2021 and a symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences in July 2021.
Image gallery
Congratulations to Prof Murray Campbell who has been presented with a lifetime achievement award from the European Acoustics Association.
Prof Murray Campbell is a Senior Professorial Fellow and Professor Emeritus at the School of Physics and Astronomy. He is also a founding member of the University’s Acoustics and Audio Group.
The European Acoustics Association (EAA) works to promote the development and progress of acoustics in its different aspects, its technologies and applications. The EAA award for lifetime achievements in acoustics is issued every 3 years to someone who has demonstrated outstanding scientific and/or industrial achievements in the field of acoustics.
The medal was due to be presented at the opening ceremony of the triennial EAA Forum Acusticum congress in France in April 2020, but this was postponed to a virtual event this December.
Prof Campbell works on the physics and acoustics of musical instruments.
