CAPP operates in the Faculty of Science, Department of Physics on the Auckland Park Kingsway campus of UJ. There are great opportunities for students at CAPP who want to study towards BSc honours, MSc and PhD degrees in Physics. Specialised honours courses are designed to prepare students for research in Astrophysics.
As the name suggests the Centre is focussed on cross-disciplinary research with topics from Astrophysics and Particle Physics. Information from various corners of the universe reaches us in the form of light, which behaves like particles at high energies that are called gamma rays, and in the form of other elementary particles such as cosmic rays and neutrinos. These cosmic particles are produced at fantastic laboratories in the universe, such as black holes of various masses, neutron stars, exploding stars, etc.
The research at CAPP is aimed at studying cosmic particles and advance our knowledge on their creation in various astrophysical sources, their propagation in the universe and their interactions with other particles. Recent discovery of gravitational waves from two colliding black holes and from merging binary neutron stars, as well as discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos have opened new windows to the universe.
Our researchers are involved in theoretical modelling, computation and data analysis for studying cosmic particles, their astrophysical sources and answering some of the most fundamental physics questions regarding their interactions. The astrophysical sources that are studied closely are Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Active-Galactic Nuclei (AGNs).
To learn more about the Centre for Astro-Particle Physics at the University of Johannesburg, visit their visit here: www.uj.ac.za/capp or contact capp@uj.ac.za
