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The bulk of my
research activity revolves
around the APEX-SZ experiment, which is a bolometer
camera mounted on the APEX
telescope in Chile at an altitude of 5100 meters. It's job is to take
pictures of galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich
(SZ) effect, a name
given to the tiny modifications in the signal of the Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB) radiation which are created when the CMB
photons pass through a galaxy cluster. About 1% of these photons get a
kick
from the energetic electrons in the hot ionized intra-cluster medium,
and their change in energy gives us a measure to quantify the cluster's
mass and energy content. We can then use these clusters to probe what
the universe is made of, and how its large-scale structure took shape
over time.
I am
involved in all the major aspects of
this experiment: Source selection, observation, data
reduction and the
scientific analysis. My interest lies mostly in studying the
physics of the hot
intra-cluster medium, how it evolves with time and how it affects
the growth of the cluster galaxies. It is really interesting to
do
this when the
millimeter-wave SZ data is
combined with the X-ray and
weak-lensing (optical) results, to give us a holistic picture of
matter and energy distribution in galaxy clusters which otherwise will
not at all be clear from observations made at one
single wavelength.
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