Opening up a new frontier: active galactic nuclei in galaxy clusters at low radio frequencies

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 20th June 2024 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

Most of the baryonic mass within a galaxy cluster is not located within its galaxies but in a hot diffuse gas called the intracluster medium (ICM). This gas is of key importance to the evolution of its cluster as it fuels star formation, as well as black hole growth in its galaxies. These black holes create a feedback cycle by resupplying energy to the ICM. To study this, low-frequency radio observations are essential. Observations in this frequency regime are particularly challenging for several reasons, including the Earth's ionosphere, the amount of suitable calibrator sources, and the extreme data volumes produced by low-frequency arrays. However, overcoming these challenges is very rewarding, as it offers an unprecedented view of the radio sky. In this talk, I will discuss the practicalities of low-frequency radio observations, how we currently calibrate the International LOFAR Telescope, and what its new observational capabilities are showing us about the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters.

Join the meeting online HERE if you can't attend in person

Speaker: Dr Roland Timmerman

Dr. Roland Timmerman joined Durham University after obtaining his PhD in 2023 from Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. Throughout his studies, he has focused on extracting the most out of radio observations in order to study the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters. As a member of the LOFAR Long Baseline Working Group, he helped to develop the strategies and software necessary to perform the calibration of low-frequency high-resolution radio observations for the first time. Equipped with these new observational capabilities, he is currently working on studying the formation and early evolution of galaxy clusters by studying the feedback cycle between the supermassive black holes in these clusters and the diffuse intracluster medium.