Chris Gordon

Senior Lecturer Above the BarChris Gordon

Postgraduate Co-ordinator (Physics)
Julius von Haast 617
Internal Phone: 95156

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 the 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.

I am currently working on a couple of projects related to observationally testing the axion proposal for dark matter. I am also working on a project to constrain dark matter using gravitational wave observations.

In the past, I have also worked on projects related to inflation, the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structures and galaxy clusters.

Recent Publications

  • 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.
  • Ploeg H. and Gordon C. (2021) The effect of kick velocities on the spatial distribution of millisecond pulsars and implications for the Galactic center excess. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2021(10) http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/10/020.