SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

DiRAC resources used: COSMA8 A new understanding of the “canonical” model for Moon formation was provided by Kegerreis et al (2022). Our paper showed that a Moon-sized body can be immediately placed into orbit following the collision of a Mars-sized body, called Theia, with the proto-Earth. Previous low resolution hydrodynamical simulations of this planetary collision […]

Dr Adrian Barker University of Leeds Here are a few science hightlights since our project started on 1st April 2022. Neutron stars are the strongest magnets in the Universe. Their extraordinary magnetic fields are formed during the supernova explosion and continue evolving when neutron star crust solidifies. Magnetic fields of neutron stars are so strong […]

Contrary to the standard lore, there is mounting observational evidence that feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) may also play a role at the low-mass end of the galaxy population. We have explored this possibility with a series of high-resolution zoom-in simulations, varying the AGN prescription and supernova energetics. We find that with the commonly […]

Nearly-conformal gauge theories have been singled out as potential avenues for new physicics that can explain electroweak symmetry breaking in the standard model. Among them, SU(2) gauge theory with one or two adjoint fermions have shown good indications of being nearly conformal. Project dp208 has set out to probe closer to the continuum limit of […]

PI: Hayley J Macpherson In cosmology we typically simplify the dynamics of the Universe via the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic expansion of space-time. While such an assumption is extremely useful and necessary in most application, the dynamics are realistically more complicated. The existence of the large-scale structure of galaxies naturally results in an […]

Exoplanets form in cold discs of gas and dust around young stars. Our long-standing picture of these so-called protoplanetary discs is that all the planet-forming material orbits in a single plane (as with the planets in the Solar System). However, recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, the ESO VLT, and ALMA, have shown that […]

Axion-like particles (ALPs) are a candidate for dark matter, the elusive ‘missing mass’ of the universe, inferred by it’s gravitational presence in galaxies, clusters and cosmological structure formation. As a dark matter candidate, ALPs are preferred by theorists since they are a model independent generalisation of the standard model of particle physics, and are predicted […]

Understanding the nature of the Standard Model Higgs boson is still an open problem. Extensions of the Standard Model in which its fields have a composite origin provide a compelling first-principle explanation of the existence of the Higgs boson and explain its mass in terms of spontaneous breaking of enlarged global symmetries of a novel […]

DiRAC Project dp162/PPSP311, “Lattice studies of 3d super-Yang–Mills and holography”, is using the Cambridge icelake cluster to explore conjectured holographic dualities that relate supersymmetric quantum field theories to quantum gravity in a higher number of space-time dimensions. Such holographic dualities are widely employed in theoretical physics, and are beginning to benefit from first-principles lattice field […]

One of the key factors determining galaxies’ observable properties, such as their morphology and colour, is their angular momentum. However, the origin of this angular momentum remains uncertain. Observations reveal that the spins of neighbouring galaxies are correlated one with another, a signal known as the intrinsic alignment signal. This suggests that part of this […]