Annual Report 2005.pdf - School of Physics - University of Melbourne

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Group Reports & Publications> 31 ASTROPHYSICS PROF RACHEL WEBSTER The Astrophysics group has continued its strong research program and its commitment to a successful research training program. Dr Stuart Wyithe was appointed to the new faculty position in the group in 2004. He has continued his research collaboration with Professor Avi Loeb at Harvard, working on the Epoch of Reionisation and the formation and evolution of supermasssive black holes. During 2005, Stuart has started supervising his first PhD student, Jhan Srbinovsky, working on the Epoch of Reionisation. Dr Andrew Melatos has further developed his models of gravitational radiation from accreting neutron stars, with promising predictions for the possibilities of detecting this radiation with the current generation of long baseline interferometers such as LIGO. In addition, Dr Melatos published the results of his Gemini observations of the Crab pulsar wind nebula. His collaboration with PhD student Peralta and Dr Andrew Ooi’s group in Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne yielded new results in superfluid hydrodynamics, with laboratory applications. Dr David Barnes resigned to follow his passion of photography. Dr Barnes has made a substantial contribution to the development of the Australian Virtual Observatory, www.ausvo.org, and also to the ongoing analysis of the HIPASS dataset. Professor Rachel Webster continued her work on the microlensing of lensed quasars, a project which will develop new techniques to measure the sizes of quasar emission regions. This program was supported by a large allocation of Gemini time. Professor Webster was the inaugural Caroline Herschel Distinguished Lecturer at the Space telescope Science Institute in June 2005. During 2005, the Melbourne group worked with collaborators at MIT and Harvard to deploy 3 tiles at Mileura Station in WA. This project was managed by David Barnes, who was assisted by Jamie Stevens, Randall Wayth and Chris Johnston. The deployment was spectacularly successful, with at least two publishable results from the first datasets. Five PhDs were awarded in the group in 2005: Drs Donald Payne, Cathy Trott, Randall Wayth, Arna Karick and Jamie Stevens. In addition, PhD student Ivy Wong spent a year working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, with Dr Gerhardt Meurer, and PhD student Matthias Vigelius spent two months at Harvard, working with Prof Bryan Gaensler. Research Fellows Neil Killeen and Mark Dijkstra also joined the Astro group.
Publications for 2005 include: Mastrano A & Melatos A, “Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and circulation transfer at an isotropicanisotropic superfluid interface in a neutron star” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 361:927-941 (2005) Melatos A & Payne DJB, “Gravitational radiation from an accreting millisecond pulsar with a magnetically confined mountain” Astrophysical Journal 623:1044-1050. 2005. Melatos A, Scheltus DE, Whiting MT, Eikenberry SS, Romani RW, Rigaut F, Spitkovsky A, Arons J & Payne DJB, “Near-infrared, kilosecond variability of the wisps and jet in the crab pulsar wind nebula” Astrophysical Journal 633:931-940 (2005). Peralta CA, Melatos A, Giacobello M & Ooi ASH,”Global three-dimentional flow of a neutron superfluid in a spherical shell in a neutron star” Astronomical Journal 635:1224-1232 (2005) Lazendic-Galloway J, Wang Z & Morgan EH,”Discovery of pulstions in the x-ray transient 4U 1901+03” Astronomical Journal 635:1217- 1223 (2005) Martinez H & Peralta CA,”Self-similarity in a Kantowski-Sachs universe with a string cloud” Revista Mexicana de Fisica 51:22-26 (2005) Wayth RB, Warren SJ, Lewis GF & Hewitt PC, “The lens and source of the optical Einstein ring gravitational lens ER 0047-2808” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 360:1333-1344 (2005) Wyithe JSB & Loeb A, “Calibrating the galaxy halo-black hole relation based on the clustering of quasars” Astrophysical Journal 621:95-103 (2005) Wyithe JSB & Loeb A, “Undetected sources allow transmission of the Lyα line from galaxies prior to reionization” Astrophysical Journal 625:1-5 (2005) Kilborn VA, Koribalski BS, Forbes DA, Barnes DG & Musgrave RC, “A wide-field HI study of the NGC 1566 group”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 356:77-88 (2005) Venugopal S, Beeson BA, Melnikoff S & Barnes DG, “A Portal for Grid-enabled Physics” In R Buyya, PD Coddington, P Montague, R Safavi- Naini, NP Sheppard & AL Wendelborn (eds), ACSW Frontiers 2005, 2005 ACSW Workshops - the Australasian Workshop on Grid Computing and e-Research (AusGrid 2005) and the Third Australasian Information Security Workshop (AISW 2005) 44 : 13-20 Sydney, Australia: Australian Computer Society Inc. 32 Skjaeraasen O, Melatos A & Spitkovsky A,”Particle-in-cell simulations of a nonlinear transverse electromagnetic wave in a pulsar wind termination shock” Astrophysical Journal 634:542-546 (2005) Trott CM & Melatos A, “Collapsed and extended cold dark matter halos in softened N-body gravity” Astrophysical Journal 618:38-45 (2005) O'Dowd M & Urry CM, “Host galaxy evolution in radio-loud active galactic nuclei” Astrophysical Journal 627:97-124 (2005) O'Dowd M, Urry CM, Scarpa R, Wayth RB & Webster RL, “H1517+656: The birth of a BL lacertae object?” Astrophysical Journal 627:125- 133 (2005) Wayth RB, O'Dowd M & Webster RL, “A microlensing measurement of the size of a broad emission-line region in the lensed quasar QSO 2237+0305” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 359:561-566 (2005)
Page 1 and 2: 2005 School of Physics ANNUAL REPOR
Page 3 and 4: The University of Melbourne> XX 02
Page 5 and 6: "Providing outstanding innovative t
Page 7 and 8: SCHOOL GOVERNANCE The School contin
Page 9 and 10: Rachel Webster BSc Monash, MSc Suss
Page 11 and 12: RESEARCH STAFF Senior Research Fell
Page 13 and 14: Apparatus for the measurement of me
Page 15 and 16: Visitors > 14 The School of Physics
Page 17 and 18: Dr Bart Smeets, BSc Belgium, MSc Ph
Page 19 and 20: Professor David Jamieson et al ARC
Page 21 and 22: Associate Professor Chris Chantler
Page 23 and 24: Assoc Prof TC Ralph, ARC CQCT, Univ
Page 25 and 26: Mr Thijs Meijer, University of Melb
Page 27 and 28: Gassull, Daniel Materials issues in
Page 29 and 30: Postgraduates and students: Celine
Page 31: Christoph Hofmann Diffraction contr
Page 35 and 36: Chang M-C, ..Moloney GR, ..Sevior M
Page 37 and 38: interactions when fabricated into q
Page 39 and 40: United States of America: SPIE - Th
Page 41 and 42: Publications for 2005 include: E. C
Page 43 and 44: Pauli principle in collective-model
Page 45 and 46: Crocker RM, Melia F & Volkas RR,
Page 47 and 48: Publications for 2005 include: Oliv
Page 49 and 50: PAUL FRASER (PPSS President) The Po
Page 51 and 52: POSTGRADUATE Fulbright Scholarship
Page 53 and 54: MUPPETS show, Mildura Outreach Prog
Page 55 and 56: Alumni & Friends > 54 The School of
Page 57: More information > 56 For more info

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