Wed 7th February @ noon, Rm 210.104

Abstract:

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles – mostly protons and atomic nuclei – observed arriving at Earth from outside the solar system. They can reach ‘ultra-high’ energies of up to 10^20 eV, but the search for the cosmic accelerators producing them is still ongoing. Candidates include supermassive accreting black holes, and the supernovae of the most massive stars.

One method to detect them is the “lunar technique”, by which radio telescopes observe the Moon and search for the nanosecond flashes of radio waves emitted when these particles interact. Critical to this technique is understanding the properties of the lunar surface and sub-surface, and how this affects particle interactions and the transmission of the emitted radio waves.

This talk will briefly review the status of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray research, and past observations with the lunar technique. The focus will be on current uncertainties in modelling the lunar (sub-)surface, and how this affects the outgoing radio signal. The talk will conclude with the prospects for using this technique with the Square Kilometre Array to discover the origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays.

Short bio:

Clancy did his PhD at University of Adelaide 2006-2009 on lunar detection of neutrinos, for which he was awarded the 2010 Bragg Gold medal. He then held post-doc positions in Nijmegen (the Netherlands) working on the LOFAR radio telescope (2009-2011) and in Erlangen (Germany) working on ANTARES and KM3NeT neutrino telescopes (2011-2017). Clancy is currently at Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy to work on fast radio burst detection.