Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College
Cosmology
Cosmic Microwave Background
Bayesian Statistics
Nested Sampling
Will Handley is accepting applications for PhD students.
Will Handley is available for consultancy.
Biography:
2016 Oct-Present: Junior Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College
2016 July-Sep: Post-doctoral position at UCL
2012-2016: PhD in Physics (University of Cambridge)
2008-2012: MSci in Experimental and Theoretical Physics (University of Cambridge)
Research Interests
Will Handley is a Theoretical Cosmologist, studying the very earliest moments of the universe, having recently completed his PhD under his supervisors Anthony Lasenby and Mike Hobson.
His main interest is in "Initial Conditions for Inflation", examining the effect that high energy physics has on the universe a split second after the Big Bang. In 2014, he proved that that the pre-inflationary universe takes an extremely generic form, independent of the type of particle which drives the early accelerated expansion of the universe.
In addition to theoretical investigation, he also examines the observational consequences of these new ideas; testing theories against the latest data from microwave telescopes using the University supercomputers.
Recently, his work has focussed on developing novel Bayesian algorithms for high-dimensional parameter estimation and model comparison using nested sampling. Possible applications currently under investigation include protein folding and compressed sensing, in addition to cosmological parameter estimation.
Will Handley is a member of the Planck Core HFI team 2.
Teaching
- Supervisions: Part IA Mathematics for Natural Sciences (Michaelmas 2012-present)
- Supervisions: Part IA Physics for Natural Sciences (Michaelmas 2015 - Easter 2016)
- Supervisions: Part II General Relativity (Michaelmas 2013-present)
- Demonstrating: Part II Theoretical Physics 1 (Michaelmas 2012)
- Demonstrating: Part II Theoretical Physics 2 (Lent 2013)
- Tripos Examples Classes: Part IA Mathematics for Natural Sciences (Easter 2014 -Present)
Part III Projects
Other Professional Activities
Awards and Prizes
- December 2013: Best Presentation (Cavendish Graduate Students Conference)
- 2011-2012: Best Theoretical final year project (University of Cambridge)
Talks
- PolyChord 2.0: Fast cosmological inference with Nested Sampling, Cosmo 17 Paris (Aug 2017)
- Modern Bayesian Inference: Theory and Practice, RWTH Aachen (Jun 2017)
- Parameter estimation and Model comparison, IFT Summer School, Madrid (Mar 2017)
- PolyChord 2.0: Advances in Nested Sampling with astrophysical applications, CCA, Flatiron institute, New York (Feb 2017)
- PolyChord 2.0 & the future of nested sampling, University College London, UK. (Sep 2016)
- PolyChord 2.0 & the future of nested sampling, University of Sussex, UK. (May 2016)
- PolyChord & the future of nested sampling, Edinburgh, UK. (Mar 2016)
- PolyChord: next generation nested sampling, Max Planck Institute, Germany. (Dec 2015)
- PolyChord: next generation nested sampling, University of Sussex, UK. (Feb 2015)
- Kinetic dominance in the pre-inflationary universe, Cavendish grad. conference (Dec 2013)
Outreach
- "Introduction to Astronomy: Beyond the Milky Way": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (27th May 2015)
- "To infinity and beyond: Dark Energy": Pint of Science Talk, Cambridge Brewhouse (20th May 2015)
- "The Cosmic Microwave Background: Our probe of the birth of the universe": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (13th January 2015)
- "Dark Energy and Dark Matter: The composition and Fate of the universe": Letchworth Astronomical Society (7:45pm 26th November 2014)
- "Introduction to Astronomy: Beyond the Milky Way": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (28th May 2014)
- "Inflation: Extreme expansion in the earliest universe": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (19th March 2014)
- "The Physics of Juggling": CCPE, Cavendish Laboratory (7 times 10th-14th February 2014, 17th-18th March 2014)
- "The first 3 yocto-pico seconds": Three minute wonder, Cavendish Laboratory (31st January 2014)
- "Special Relativity: An intutitive viewpoint": Hill's Road VIth form college (18th December 2013)
- "Dark matter and dark energy: common misconceptions": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (2nd October 2013)
- "Astrophysics: The universe in 15 minutes": Physics at Work, Cavendish Laboratory (25th September 2013)
- "Introduction to Cosmology": Hill's Road VIth form college (8th July 2013)
- "Introduction to Astronomy: Beyond the Milky Way": Institute of Astronomy Public Talk, University of Cambridge (29th May 2013)
- "Institute of Astronomy Open Day": (23rd March 2013)
- "Cosmology: The search for Dark Matter and Dark Energy": Luton Astronomical Society, (20th March 2013)
- "Frontiers of Physics: Cosmology": Alleyn's School (26th September 2012)
Collaborators
Key Publications
Dec 2016: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Inflation arXiv:1612.08270
Dec 2016: The Runge-Kutta-Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method arXiv:1612.02288
July 2016: Novel quantum initial conditions for inflation PRD arXiv:1607.04148
June 2015: PolyChord: next-generation nested sampling MNRAS arXiv:1506.00171
Feb 2015: PolyChord: nested sampling for cosmology: MNRAS arXiv:1502.01856
Feb 2015: Planck 2015 results: XX Constraints on Inflation: A&A arXiv:1502.02114
Jan 2014: Kinetic Initial Conditions for Inflation: PRD arXiv:1401.2253
Other Publications
arXiv list http://arxiv.org/a/handley_w_1
ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5866-0445
Jul 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: mitigation of systematic effects arXiv:1707.04224
Jul 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: gravitational lensing of the CMB arXiv:1702.02259
Jul 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Survey requirements and mission design arXiv:1706.0416
May 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: The Instrument arXiv:1705.02170
Apr 2017: Exploring cosmic origins with CORE: effects of observer peculiar motion arXiv:1704.05764
Apr 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: B-mode Component Separation arXiv:1704.04501
Apr 2017: Dynamic nested sampling: an improved algorithm for parameter estimation and evidence calculation 1704.03459
Apr 2017: Sampling errors in nested sampling parameter estimation arXiv:1703.09701
Apr 2017: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Cluster Science arXiv:1703.10456
Jan 2017: Dynamical dark energy in light of the latest observations arXiv:1701.80165 Nature Astronomy
Dec 2016: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Cosmological Parameters arXiv:1612.00021
Sep 2016: Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Extragalactic sources in Cosmic Microwave Background maps arXiv:1609.07263
June 2016: Constraining the dark energy equation of state using Baye's theorem and the Kullback-Liebler divergence arXiv:1607.00270
April 2016: AMI observations of ten CLASH galaxy clusters: SZ and X-ray data used together to determine cluster dynamical states MNRAS arXiv:1604.06120
June 2015: Bayesian Model selection without evidences: application to the dark energy equation of state MNRAS arXiv:1506.09024
Feb 2015: Planck 2015 results: I overview of products and scientific results: A&A arXiv:1502.01582
Thesis
Jan 2017: My thesis
