Profile

I’m looking for particles called axions. We don’t know whether or not axions exist, but if they do they are streaming through the Earth all the time! Axions are predicted by String Theory – a theory that tells us that different particles are really different patterns of vibration on strings. We don’t know whether or not String Theory is correct, and discovering whether or not axions exist might help us decide.

The trouble is, axions hardly interact with every day matter at all. If they exist, they are flying through you right now, but you can’t see or feel them. Fortunately, we predict that a few axions will turn into X-rays in big, strong magnetic fields. These magnetic fields need to cover huge distances, much larger than anything we could create on Earth. I’m trying to work out the X-rays that would be generated by axions flying through the magnetic field of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We can then compare this with the X-rays we observe in the night sky to try to work out whether or not axions exist.

My research involves doing lots of maths. It would take far too long to do all the sums by hand, so instead I write programs to tell my computer to do the right sums for me. These programs can get pretty complicated, and I spend most of my time trying to work out why the computer isn’t doing what I want it to!  Once I’ve finally got my programs to work, I look at the results and think about what they might mean. (This is the best bit!) My research group has a meeting every week where we discuss what we’ve been doing and try to solve each other’s problems.

Another big part of they job is reading about what other scientists have done, especially if it might be relevant to my work. Because I’m in my first year, I’m also still going to lectures and doing problem sheets. (This is basically like homework!)