I study the light that black holes reflect: how the shape of the hot corona decides where the accretion disc is lit, and what that does to the X-ray spectrum we see.
I’m a third-year STFC-funded PhD student in the Astrophysics Group at the University of Bristol, supervised by Prof. Andrew Young. I work on X-ray reflection spectroscopy of accreting black holes, combining general-relativistic ray tracing in Julia with NuSTAR and XMM-Newton data. I expect to finish in March 2028.
Fe Kα line profiles for different coronal geometries
The iron line is broadened and skewed by Doppler shifts and gravitational redshift close to the black hole. Changing the shape of the corona changes how strongly the inner disc is lit, which reshapes the red wing of the line.
Recent
- Jan 2027 Presenting at the NewAthena SWG2 meeting, ESA/ESTEC Upcoming
- Sep 2026 Talk at New Results in X-ray Astronomy & NewAthena, Leicester
- Aug 2026 Public talk at Astronomy on Tap Bristol: “Eclipses Past, Present, and Future”
- Jul 2026 Talk at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2026), Birmingham