Newcastle University

• Curriculum Vitae
• Research Groups:

  Astrophysical and Geophysical Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)

  Large scale magnetic fields in the Universe: Workshop of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI)

  Grand Challenge: Dynamo action in supernova-driven interstellar flows

  Pencil-code Developers Group

• My supervisors are Prof. Anvar Shukurov and Dr Graeme Sarson and Dr Andrew Fletcher and Dr Maarit J. Mantere (née Korpi)
• Website (ncl access only): http://wiki.mas.ncl.ac.uk/mas/FredGent

Research Interests

Simulations of supernova driven turbulence in the Interstellar Medium (ISM)

Simulations of Faraday rotation measures in the turbulent ISM

Publications

Supernova-regulated ISM. I. The multi-phase structure (pdf version), with Anvar Shukurov, Andrew Fletcher, Graeme R. Sarson, Maarit J. Mantere (Submitted to MNRAS on 16 Apr 2012).

Galaxies in a box: A simulated view of the interstellar medium a chapter for ISSI Workshop book on large scale magnetic fields published 17 May 2011. Preprint

Conferences, Meetings and Workshops

• UKMHD 2011
• TAM 2011 Meeting website BSC Barcelona Spain June 2011
• LOFAR Magnetism Key Science Project Newcastle Workshop, 5th & 6th April 2011
• Durham-Newcastle Postgraduate Afternoon of Talks, 31st March 2011, Newcastle University.
• TAM 2010 Meeting website CSC Espoo Finland June 2010
• UKMHD 2010
• ISSI Workshop Bern, Switzerland 1-5th March 2010
• Nordita Winter School on Dynamos above and below and in the laboratory January 2010
• ICTP Summer School on Astrophysical Turbulence and Dynamos April 2009
• Nordita - European Science Foundation - Astrophysical Magnetohydrodynamics April 2009
• STFC Summer School - Solar Physics September 2008

Collaboration

Through the support of HPC Europa I made a number of extended visits to the Physics Department of Helisnki University to work with Maarit Mantere and have access to the high performance computing resources of CSC in Espoo Finland. In February 2011 we were granted a Grand Challenge award of 2 million cpu hours and priority access to the CSC clusters to pursue an investigation of the galactic dynamo through high resolution extended duration numerical simulations of the interstellar medium.

Here are my hosts from Helsinki Maarit and Petri Käpylä

Presentations

• Amiss 2012-Mar-07:Multiphase ISM: a physical approach and identifying the mean field
• Lofar 2011-Mar-06:ISM simulations
• Postgraduate Forum Newcastle 2010-Oct-27: Resolving the field length in the interstellar medium
• UKMHD Conference Leeds 2011-Jun-21: SN Driven Turbulence
• TAM Meeting CSC Espoo Finland 2010-Jun-16: SN Driven Turbulence
• ISSI Workshop Bern Switzerland 2010-Mar-04:Supernova driven turbulence
• Nordita Winter School Stockholm Sweden 2010-Jan-19: Supernova driven turbulence

Posters

	Transnational Access Meeting (Barcelona) / UKMHD Conference (London) 2011-Jun: Supernova Driven Turbulence
	British Science Association: Showcase 2009-Nov-06
	MMath 4th Year Project: Gerbes 2008-May-05
	Summer Scholarship: Star formation 2007-Nov-17

Video

Movies of supernova (SN) driven turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM). The movie first from the left (in blue) depicts the density of the ISM in which SN remnants appear as dark hollows, where the explosion has forced out the gas leaving a very diffuse remnant interior. The next movie (in red) depicts the temperature. In this case the SN remants appear as light flashes where the explosions heat the ISM to in excess of 10 Million degrees Kelvin. Each face shows a 2D slice through the centre of the box. The midplane of the galaxy is in the centre and our domain extend 1 kiloparsec (kpc) either side of the mid plane and covers an area 1 square kpc representing the radial and azimuthal directions relative to the galactic centre. We model conditions typical of the solar neighbourhood. (1 kpc = 30.86 thousand million million km) The latter two movies depict the magnetic field and show the dynamo action of the ISM from a small seed field. The movie on the right shows the magntic energy distribution and the mvoie next to it the azimuthal component of the magnetic field. A small seed field of 0.001 micro Gauss is amplified by the turbulence and differential rotation of the galaxy to about 2 micro Gauss.

Simulation of a single SN remnant in a uniform ambient ISM at rest for comparison with the snowplough solution and the enhanced result by Cioffi et al 1988. The red movie depicts temperature and blue gas density. 10⁵¹ ergs of energy, half as thermal energy and the rest as kinetic energy, are initially injected into a sphere with radius about the origin adjusted to enclose 60 solar masses. This heats the ISM inside the remnant to above 10 million Kelvin and shock waves exceeding 500 km s^-1 transport the gas from the core of the remnant into a dense expanding shell.

MathsAid

I work part time in MathsAid, providing a drop in service for one-to-one tuition in mathematics and numeracy for undergraduate and graduate students within Newcastle University.

AMISS

2009-2010: I coordinated the applied mathematics internal seminar series within the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Newcastle Unviversity together with Andrew Baggaley and Matthew Buckley. Here we are together at the Nordita winter school in Stockholm along with Drew Smith(left to right: Drew,Matt,Bags,me).

Five-a-side

2009-present: I coordinate weekly 5-a-side football in the University Sports Centre for staff and graduate students in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Newcastle University. We also include visiting students from some other schools, who may have collaborated with us from time to time on research. These are friendly competitive games.

Here is a snap taken to commemorate the last game of Daisuke (on the right), who was visiting the School of Agriculture, Food & Rural Development from Japan. Unfortunately on this day I was absent through one of my numerous injuries.

David Elliot Anthony Youd Javier Serradilla Timothy Yeomans Andrew Baggaley Matthew Buckley Matteo Bossi Donatello Gallucci Daisuke Kobayashi

Postgraduate Committee

2009-present: Previously with Kevin Wilson and currently with Matthew Buckley I represent the students on the Postgraduate Committee which meets with staff from the three School disciplines (Applied, Pure and Statistics) about once per quarter.

PhD6 Room 4.14

Rute	Tim	Joy	Lucy

Donatello	Anisah	Fred

Paintball

Amongst various activities we arranged a day paintballing in the woods near Ponteland. Very wet, very messy and a lot of fun.

Interests

In addition to my research interests I am a Grade 6 Driving Instructor part time.

I support Newcastle United FC and enjoy playing 5-a-side (if fit), swimming, running along the beach, and playing badminton and basketball.

Favourite TV drama The Killing: a Danish crime drama. Sara Lund's jumper! Shows on BBC Four

Favourite recent read The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington: a political mystery thriller set in Germany during the early days of the Wehrmacht is a gripping read which mixes romance, domestic abuse, general relativity, psychology and eugenics. The author makes these accessible maintaining a pacy, moving drama from start to finish with empathetic characters.

Family My son Declan with a monkey in earlier years at Tenereife Zoo. He is the one without the tail. More recently in My Chem outfit. Step kids Daniel & Katy.

The Shadow Line (above) and Zen (right). I am disgusted that the BBC canned the intense, cerebral and luxuriantly stylish Zen (set in Italy), but commissioned a second series of the thoroughly disjointed, incoherent and superficial Luther.

Zen