Main Research Fields

The research I am doing is part of an comprehensive approach involving multi-wavelength (X-ray and radio continuum) high-sensitivity observations of a sample of actively star-forming nearby galaxies:

It is still a matter of debate how the halo gas is ionized and heated: are these processes taking place in the disk and is the gas transferred into the halo afterwards, or is the halo gas of neutral origin and ionized by star-formation in the disk and/or by heating processes which are working in the halo? In addition, comparing energy densities of magnetic fields and thermal gas can address the question of how important magnetic fields are for the dynamics and evolution of galactic disks and halos, and possibly even for the heating of the X-ray emitting gas via magnetic reconnection taking place in magnetic arms found in interarm regions of face-on oriented spiral galxies.

More recently I also started to expand the study of extra-planar gas and magnetic fields on cluster spiral galaxies. Frequently, these objects are found to be affected by ram pressure stripping or tidal interactions as they travel through the cluster intergalactic medium.