RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Thursday, 07 April 2016, 11:00-12:00; Duffield Lecture Theatre


Stefan Wagner

"The New Frontier of High-Energy Gamma-ray Astrophysics"

During the last decade a third window for ground-based astronomy was opened and high energy astrophysics now enables studies up to photon energies of 100 TeV. A wide range of objects were discovered to emit significant amounts of energy in the high-energy gamma-ray regime, including star-forming regions, pulsars, supernova remnants, massive binaries, the diffuse interstellar medium, the Galactic Centre, AGN, etc. Observations in this energy domain enable measurements of cosmic star-formation, intergalactic magnetic fields, the cosmic non-thermal energy density, sources of neutrinos and cosmic rays, and provide constraints on dark matter and several extensions of the standard model of particle physics. The talk will introduce the techniques and current instruments, discuss some recent highlights, including studies of the Galactic Centre, the LMC, and Supermassive Black Holes, and will describe the future Very-High-Energy gamma-ray observatory CTA and the proposed Australian participation to this new facility.