Andrew Jaffe

Astrophysics Group
Blackett Laboratory, Room 1013	Phone: +44 (0)207 594 7526
Imperial College London	Fax: +44 (0)207 594 7541
Prince Consort Road
London SW7 2AZ ENGLAND	a.jaffe (at) imperial.ac.uk

My scatter-brained blog	my pgp key

More information available (including publications) at my College Personal Web Page.

Teaching Materials

Recent

Notes from my second-year course in Fourier Methods, 2007-08.

Older

First-year seminars, 2007-08. We will be doing our "Topic Review" on the article, "How to Blow Up a Star," W. Hillebrandt et al, Scientific American, October 2006, Vol. 295 Issue 4, p42. You should receive a copy via email (contact me otherwise).

Slides for my lectures giving a brief introduction to Bayesian Statistical Methods for Astrophysics, for the Imperial/UCL Postgraduate course, 2006-07. A set of problems to go along with the lectures, and some data needed for the problems.

Old: A short presentation on searching for new particles with the LHC for the First-Year seminars, 2006-07.

Old: A short presentation on Matter and Antimatter for the First-Year seminars, 2005-06.

Research Interests

Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics. Testing cosmological theories: Theory and analysis of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave background; Large Scale Structure; Statistics of the galaxy distribution and large scale flows. Supermassive Black Holes in the centers of galaxies -- their detection and use as probes of the history of structure formation

This needs to be updated! For a more recent look at my research, read my blog! (There is also some more recent information available at my College Personal Web Page.)

For several years, I have been involved in the analysis of data probing the anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background. This data encodes the state of the Universe at the epoch of recombination, about 100,000 years after the Big Bang, and the parameters governing its subsequent evolution. With the rest of the Berkeley COMBAT team, I have been closely involved with the MAXIMA and BOOMERANG experimental teams, and are developing tools to implement these and other more ambitious CMB analysis techniques. In particular, I have been involved in the development of Julian Borrill's MADCAP CMB data analysis package.

In 2000, MAXIMA and BOOMERANG released their first results, finding quantitative evidence for a flat universe! Since then, both teams have continued to gather and analyze further data, as have many other teams using a variety of experimental results. The theoretical groundwork for these analyses was laid in prior and ongoing work with these groups and other colleagues, in particular Dick Bond (CITA), Lloyd Knox (University of California, Davis) and Julian Borrill and Radek Stompor (both from the COMBAT collaboration in Berkeley) The current state of the art can be summarized in the plot at right.

Here at Imperial College, I am involved in the forthcoming Planck Surveyor Satellite, which will probe the CMB power spectrum to unprecedented precision. Imperial is the home of the London Planck Analysis Center (LPAC), with responsibility for much of the initial processing of data for Planck's High Frequency Instrument.

I have also been involved in the understanding of the large-scale velocity field of the universe, and in understanding the epoch of galaxy formation and reionization, especially through its impact on the CMB.

Most recently I have started investigating the gravity-wave background produced by the coalescence of Supermassive Black Hole binaries at the centers of galaxies. This probes the formation of galaxies from early times until the present, and provides clues to the dynamical state of the centers of galaxies. There are enticing prospects for the detection of these binaries by the copious amount of energy they expel as gravitational radiation.

Scientific detritus

My full CV is also available.

Talks and Lectures

A recent set of lectures from the NATO Summer school in Cargèse, Corsica, France in html and pdf.
An undergraduate lecture on the Cosmic Microwave Background given for Imperial's Cosmology course in pdf.

Selected Papers

``A Polemic on Probability'', review of E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory: the Logic of Science, Science, 301, 1329, 2003.
``Determining Foreground Contamination in CMB Observations: Diffuse Galactic Emission in the MAXIMA-I Field,'' A.H. Jaffe et al., Ap. J., submitted, 2003. (astro-ph/0301077)
``Gravitational Waves Probe the Coalescence Rate of Massive Black Hole Binaries,'' A.H. Jaffe & D.C. Backer, Ap. J., to be published, 2003. (astro-ph/0210148)
``Secondary CMB Anisotropies from Cosmological Reionization'', N.Y. Gnedin & A.H. Jaffe, Ap. J., 551, 3-14, 2001. (astro-ph/0008469)
``Cosmology from MAXIMA-1, BOOMERANG & COBE/DMR CMB Observations'', A.H. Jaffe et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 3475-9, 2001. (astro-ph/0007333)
``Constraints on Cosmological Parameters from MAXIMA-1.'' A. Balbi et al, Astrophys. J. 545, L1-4, 2000. (astro-ph/0005124).
``MAXIMA-1: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy on angular scales of 10 arcminutes to 5 degrees'' S. Hanany et al, Astrophys. J. 545, L5-9, 2000. (astro-ph/0005123).
``First Estimations of Cosmological Parameters from Boomerang,'' A.E. Lange et al, Phys. Rev. D. submitted, 2000. (astro-ph/0005004)
``A Flat Universe from High-Resolution Maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation,'' P. de Bernardis et al, Nature 404, 955-959, 2000.
``New Evidence for a Low Density Universe'', R. Juszkiewicz, P.G. Ferreira, H.A. Feldman, A.H. Jaffe & M. Davis, Science, 7, 287, 109-112, 2000. (astro-ph/0001041)
``A Polarization Pursuers' Guide,'' A.H. Jaffe, M. Kamionkowski & L. Wang, Phys. Rev. D61, 083501, 2000. (astro-ph/9909281).
``Computing Challenges for the Cosmic Microwave Background'', J.R. Bond, R. Crittenden, A.H. Jaffe & L.E. Knox, Computing in Science and Engineering, March/April, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 21, 1999 (astro-ph/9903166).
``Constraining Large Scale Structure Theories with the Cosmic Background Radiation'', J.R. Bond & A.H. Jaffe, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, 357, 57-75, 1999. (astro-ph/9809043)
``Radical Compression of Cosmic Microwave Background Data'', J.R. Bond, A.H. Jaffe & L. Knox, Astrophys. J. 533, 19, 2000. (CfPA/98-th-16, astro-ph/9808264)
``Comparing Cosmic Microwave Background Datasets'', L. Knox, J.R. Bond, A.H. Jaffe, M. Segal & D. Charbonneau, Phys. Rev. D58, 083004, 1998. (astro-ph/9803272)
``Calculation of the Ostriker-Vishniac Effect in CDM Models'', A.H. Jaffe & M. Kamionkowski, Phys. Rev D58, 043001, 1998. (CfPA-97-th-27, astro-ph/9801022)
``Estimating the Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background'', J.R. Bond, A.H. Jaffe & L. Knox, Phys. Rev. D57, 2117, 1998. (CfPA/97-th-11, astro-ph/9708203) [See *Below]
``Cosmic Parameter Estimation Combining Sub-Degree CMB Experiments With COBE'', J.R. Bond & A.H. Jaffe, Proc. Moriond XVI, "Microwave Background Anisotropies", 1997. (astro-ph/9610091)
``Bending of Light by Gravity Waves'', N. Kaiser & A.H. Jaffe, Ap. J., 484, 545, 1997. (astro-ph/9609043)
``H₀ and Odds on Cosmology'', A.H. Jaffe, Ap. J., 471, 24, 1996. (astro-ph/9501070)
``Likelihood Analysis of Large Scale Flows'', A.H. Jaffe & N. Kaiser, Ap. J., 455, 26, 1995.
``Quasi-Linear Evolution of Compensated Cosmological Perturbations: The Nonlinear Sigma Model'', A.H. Jaffe, Phys. Rev. D49, 3893, 1994. [Ph.D. Thesis]

Access to Data & Analysis Software

Scientist alone is true poet he gives us the moon
he promises the stars he'll make us a new universe if it comes to that
O Einstein I should have sent you my flaming mss.
O Einstein I should have pilgrimaged to your white hair.

-Allen Ginsberg, Poem Rocket

Imperial College Astrophysics