The Department of Physics is delighted to welcome Professor Nial Tanvir (University of Leicester) as a Colloquium Speaker for the academic year 2025/26. Please join us to listen to Professor Tanvir's seminar.

A reception will be held directly after the seminar in 8 West 3.15, where tea and coffee will be provided.

The seminar is open to anyone from the university, students are encouraged to attend.

Title

Probing the distant universe with gamma-ray bursts

Abstract

Long-duration GRBs are the most luminous sources known and can be detected to large distances and hence early times in the Universe. Produced by the deaths of massive stars, they pinpoint star formation over the span of cosmic history, while spectroscopy of their bright afterglows provides detailed information about their environments, in some cases for galaxies too faint to see with our most powerful telescopes. I will review lessons learnt to date from studies of high redshift GRBs and their hosts, including evidence for a puzzlingly low escape fraction of ionizing radiation, and compare to the results from high-redshift galaxy studies with HST and JWST.

Biography

Nial obtained his BSc and PhD degrees at the University of Durham. Subsequently he worked at the Universities of Cambridge and Hertfordshire, before moving to his current position at the University of Leicester in 2006. He has researched in various areas of galaxy evolution and cosmology, and is particularly interested in using powerful explosive transient sources as probes of the universe.