Senior Lecturer Above the BarChris Gordon
Qualifications & Memberships
Research Interests
My research interests are in astroparticle physics and cosmology. I am particularly interested in finding non-gravitational evidence for dark matter. This has led me to investigate the astrophysics of the Galactic Centre. It is there that the non-gravitational signatures of dark matter are likely to be largest. In particular dark matter may be self-annihilating into ordinary matter which could produce electromagnetic radiation such as gamma rays. However, there are also a lot of other astrophysical processes taking place in the Galactic Center which produce electromagnetic radiation. In particular millisecond pulsars produce a very similar signal to dark matter self-annihilation. These other astrophysical processes have to be accurately accounted for before one can determine if there is any residual electromagnetic radiation due to dark matter self-annihilation.
In the past I have also worked on projects related to inflation, the cosmic microwave background, large scale structure and galaxy clusters.
Recent Publications
- Alexander DM., Davis TM., Chaussidon E., Fawcett VA., X. Gonzalez-Morales A., Lan TW., Yèche C., Ahlen S., Aguilar JN. and Armengaud E. (2023) The DESI Survey Validation: Results from Visual Inspection of the Quasar Survey Spectra. Astronomical Journal 165(3) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/acacfc.
- Crocker RM., Macias O., Mackey D., Krumholz MR., Ando S., Horiuchi S., Baring MG., Gordon C., Venville T. and Duffy AR. (2022) Gamma-ray emission from the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy due to millisecond pulsars. Nature Astronomy 6(11): 1317-1324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01777-x.
- Gautam A., Crocker RM., Ferrario L., Ruiter AJ., Ploeg H., Gordon C. and Macias O. (2022) Millisecond pulsars from accretion-induced collapse as the origin of the Galactic Centre gamma-ray excess signal. Nature Astronomy 6(6): 703-707. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01658-3.
- Pohl M., Macias O., Coleman P. and Gordon C. (2022) Assessing the Impact of Hydrogen Absorption on the Characteristics of the Galactic Center Excess. Astrophysical Journal 929(2) http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac6032.
- Satherley JC. and Gordon C. (2022) A pedagogical review of the vacuum retarded dipole model of pulsar spin down. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 39 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2022.35.