The Cavendish Astrophysics Group is building telescopes that can see the universe’s earliest structures by capturing the faint microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. This research addresses a fundamental gap in cosmology: how did the universe evolve from a smooth, hot soup into the clumpy galaxies and clusters we see today? The team uses two novel techniques to push observations further than ever before. First, they are pioneering optical interferometry—combining light from multiple telescopes to achieve sharper images than the Hubble Space Telescope can deliver. Second, they are developing superconducting detectors that can be manufactured on chips, like computer circuits, promising highly sensitive, mass-producible arrays. This is primarily curiosity-driven fundamental science. There is no immediate practical application. However, past fundamental research in astronomy has yielded unexpected breakthroughs—for example, the development of superconducting detectors has already found uses in medical imaging and security scanning. If this work succeeds, it could reveal directly how galaxies first formed and how stars have evolved over cosmic time, answering questions about the origin of structure in the universe that have remained out of reach.
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This research is aimed at helping us understand and answer fundamental questions in cosmology and astrophysics. At the same time, novel experimental methods will be developed which can help answer future questions. We are interested in most of the main frontier questions in astrophysics. This includes: how did the universe get to be how it is? What were the processes that led to the development of structure in the universe?; what were the seed conditions that led to galaxies and clusters of galaxies existing today? We can study these questions by looking at the microwave background radiation, which contains imprints of structures in the very early universe, as well as effects from clusters of galaxies that are encountered along the way. By using data from recently developed telescopes, we can start looking also at the question of how galaxies, once formed, evolve, and crucially, what is the history of the stars that form in them as a function of time. We can do this both by looking far backwards into the universe, and by studying in detail what happens in our own galaxy. In all these areas, big advances come with the introduction of new techniques, and we want to continue to pioneer the application of a technique known as interferometry, which we developed for radioastronomy, but are also leading the introduction of into optical astronomy. This already gives angular resolving power better than the Hubble Space Telescope, and we wish to extend this so that we are sensitive to structures in extragalactic objects which have never been directly seen before. A further area of development is superconducting detectors for higher frequency observations. These promise to give great sensitivity, but also simplicity, since they could be manufactured on chips, just like computer circuits now. Being able to mass-produce them, promises very sensitive array detectors for the future, which could be employed to image astrophysical structures at early epochs, helping us again to decode the origin and evolution of structure in the universe.
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