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Professor Isobel Hook

Professor

Isobel Hook

Lancaster University

Physics Building

LA1 4YB

Lancaster

Tel: +44 1524 595234

ORCID: 0000-0002-2960-978X

Research overview

My research is focused on using distant supernovae for cosmology, specifically to measure the effects of Dark Energy in the universe. I am also involved in several future telescope projects including the European Extremely Large telescope (E-ELT), the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) and ESA's Euclid mission.

PhD supervision

The following project (and others) are available but not currently funded with a studentship. Please see the "Funded opportunities" on the Physics web pages for funded studentships. A project is available on "The next generation of Dark Energy measurements with supernovae". In the late 1990s Type Ia supernovae were used as standard candles to discover that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating, leading to the idea that some mysterious "Dark Energy" is pushing the universe apart. Despite much better measurements nowadays, our lack of understanding of Dark Energy remains one of the most fundamental problems in Physics. A key step forward is to test whether the properties of Dark Energy are constant in time and space - if any changes are found this would immediately rule out Einstein's cosmological constant as the explanation for Dark Energy. Lancaster has recently joined the 4MOST project, an international collaboration that is designing and building a new, state-of-the-art multi-object spectroscopic survey instrument that will begin operations in Chile in 2022. We plan to use 4MOST in conjunction with LSST (the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), to find and study many thousands of distant supernovae. The dataset will enable measurements of the effects of Dark Energy in different directions on the sky. The student will help design and optimise the 4MOST transient survey (called TiDES - "Time Domain Extragalactic Survey"), based on realistic simulations of the performance of LSST and 4MOST, and using data from past supernova surveys already in hand. The results of this work will help provide the best possible constraints on Dark Energy from this experiment.

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Publications & Outputs

  • Published

    PESSTO: survey description and products from the first data release by the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects

    Hook, I. M. & 101 others Smartt, S. J., Valenti, S., Fraser, M., Inserra, C., Young, D. R., Sullivan, M., Pastorello, A., Benetti, S., Gal-Yam, A., Knapic, C., Molinaro, M., Smareglia, R., Smith, K. W., Taubenberger, S., Yaron, O., Anderson, J. P., Ashall, C., Balland, C., Baltay, C., Barbarino, C., Bauer, F. E., Baumont, S., Bersier, D., Blagorodnova, N., Bongard, S., Botticella, M. T., Bufano, F., Bulla, M., Cappellaro, E., Campbell, H., Cellier-Holzem, F., Chen, T. -W., Childress, M. J., Clocchiatti, A., Contreras, C., Dall'Ora, M., Danziger, J., de Jaeger, T., De Cia, A., Della Valle, M., Dennefeld, M., Elias-Rosa, N., Elman, N., Feindt, U., Fleury, M., Gall, E., Gonzalez-Gaitan, S., Galbany, L., Morales Garoffolo, A., Greggio, L., Guillou, L. L., Hachinger, S., Hadjiyska, E., Hage, P. E., Hillebrandt, W., Hodgkin, S., Hsiao, E. Y., James, P. A., Jerkstrand, A., Kangas, T., Kankare, E., Kotak, R., Kromer, M., Kuncarayakti, H., Leloudas, G., Lundqvist, P., Lyman, J. D., Maguire, K., Manulis, I., Margheim, S. J., Mattila, S., Maund, J. R., Mazzali, P. A., McCrum, M., McKinnon, R., Moreno-Raya, M. E., Nicholl, M., Nugent, P., Pain, R., Pignata, G., Phillips, M. M., Polshaw, J., Pumo, M. L., Rabinowitz, D., Reilly, E., Romero-Canizales, C., Scalzo, R., Schmidt, B., Schulze, S., Sim, S., Sollerman, J., Taddia, F., Tartaglia, L., Terreran, G., Tomasella, L., Turatto, M., Walton, N. A., Walker, E., Wyrzykowski, L., Yuan, F. & Zampieri, L. 07/2015 In : Astronomy and Astrophysics. 579, 25 p., 40

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article

  • Published

    Slow-speed supernovae from the Palomar transient factory: two channels

    Hook, I. M. & 22 others White, C. J., Kasliwal, M. M., Nugent, P. E., Gal-Yam, A., Howell, D. A., Sullivan, M., Goobar, A., Piro, A. L., Bloom, J. S., Kulkarni, S. R., Laher, R. R., Masci, F., Ofek, E. O., Surace, J., Ben-Ami, S., Cao, Y., Cenko, S. B., Jonsson, J., Matheson, T., Sternberg, A., Quimby, R. M. & Yaron, O. 20/01/2015 In : The Astrophysical Journal. 799, 1, 21 p., 52

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article

  • Published

    A Type II Supernova Hubble Diagram from the CSP-I, SDSS-II and SNLS Surveys

    de Jaeger, T., Gonzales-Gaitan, S., Hamuy, M., Galbany, L., Anderson, J. P., Phillips, M. M., Stritzinger, M. D., Carlberg, R. G., Sullivan, M., Gutierrez, C. P., Hook, I., Howell, D. A., Hsiao, E. Y., Kuncarayakti, H., Ruhlmann-Kleider, V., Folatelli, G., Pritchet, C. & Basa, S. 27/01/2017 In : The Astrophysical Journal. 835, 2, 17 p., 166

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article

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Projects

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