The first billion years of cosmic history is still essentially uncharted territory, and promises an enticing range of scientific discovery once its frontiers have been breached. After the well-studied epoch of recombination, three major distinct phases of cosmological evolution occur: the so-called Dark Ages which witness the widespread collapse from pristine linearity via dark-matter...
The SKA Observatory will play a major role in advancing the field of radio cosmology,
measuring the positions and shapes of galaxies detected from the continuum and performing both galaxy surveys and intensity mapping measurements of the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen. In this talk, I will present the structure of the Cosmology Science Working Group briefly reviewing the status of the science...
The 21-cm line of atomic hydrogen (HI) is a key tool to study multiple aspects of galaxy formation and evolution in a cosmological context. Atomic hydrogen, indeed, dominates the mass budget of the interstellar medium and is the main reservoir for star formation in galaxies. I will review recent results from ongoing HI surveys with SKA pathfinders and discuss future exciting prospects with...
With its unparalleled combination of survey speed, angular resolution and sensitivity, the SKA promises to revolutionize our view of galaxy and supermassive black hole assembly over cosmic time. In this review talk, I will touch upon some key results obtained so far from radio-continuum surveys of SKA pathfinders and precursors. These were broadly aimed at: (i) calibrating radio-continuum as a...
Understanding the origin of non-thermal phenomena in galaxy clusters is one of the primary scientific objectives of the SKA. In my talk, I will report on results based on observations of clusters with SKA pathfinder and precursor instruments, focusing in particular on recent discoveries that represent the ground floor for the future exploration of these objects with SKA.
Cosmic magnetism is one of the scientific drivers for the SKA. Magnetic fields are indeed ubiquitous in the Universe. Although it is known that their presence has an impact on the physics of the objects that host them, their origin and evolution is still under debated.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of the scientific motivation for the SKA investigation of cosmic magnetism,...
Pulsars, thanks to their extreme physical conditions and their clock-like nature, are amazing cosmic laboratories for many fileds of astrophysics and fundamental physics. In this talk I will describe the importance of pulsar studies in the context of the Square Kilometre Array and its precursosrs, highlighting some of the most recent results and the open questions that the SKA will help answering.
Galactic science in the radio domain stands at the brink of a profound revolution, thanks to the impressive leap forward in resolution and sensitivity afforded by SKA precursors. To harness this transformative potential, the Our Galaxy working group emerges as a key collaborative hub within the SKA community, bringing together experts from multiple areas.
In this talk, we will offer a...
The ingredients for the recipe to make a habitable planet like our own Earth are: a small rocky planet at the right distance from the host star for water to be in the liquid state, and with an atmosphere organic-rich in volatiles, capable of developing organic molecules chemistry. Searches for exoplanets have shown a large degree of diversity in the planetary systems. It is yet unclear how...
The inflow of matter onto astronomical objects is connected to the generation of outflows throughout the Universe on a variety of scales, from proto-planetary disks, to merging neutron star systems and gamma ray bursts, to stellar mass and supermassive black holes.
The matter inflow/outflow processes scale predictably with mass, and proceeds according to the same basic principles around all...
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long, coherent radio flashes that exhibit the typical dispersion due to the propagation through an ionised medium. 15 years after their (serendipitous) discovery, we know that their origin is extragalactic, that a fraction of them repeats and, from the localisation of a few of them, that their environment can be quite diverse, ranging from star forming...
