Menu:
Contact
Dr. Shea Brown
Bolton Fellow (CASS)
shea.brown@csiro.au
Grad Students:
Please see individual professor's web pages and/or contact them directly to inquire about graduate student research opportunities.
Useful links:
Overview
The overall goal of this project is to challenge our current theoretical understanding of the relativistic particle populations in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) through deep 1.4 GHz observations of a flux limited sample of both low and high-redshift clusters of galaxies. Designed to compliment/extend the GMRT radio halo survey (Venturi et al. 2007), these observations will attempt to detect the peaks of the purported synchrotron cosmic-web, and place serious limits on models of CR acceleration and magnetic field amplification during large-scale structure formation. The primary goals of this survey are: 1) Confirm the bi-modal (or on-off) nature of the radio halo population, which favors turbulent re-acceleration of cosmic-ray electrons (CRe) during cluster mergers as the source of the diffuse radio emission; 2) Directly test hadronic secondary models which predict the presence of cosmic-ray protons (CRp) in the cores of massive X-ray clusters by detecting synchrotron emission from secondary CRe; 3) Search in polarization for shock structures, a potential source of CR acceleration in the IGM.
The Team