The galactic centre: a laboratory for starburst galaxies

The extreme conditions at the Galactic centre (GC) render its environment more analogous to a star-burst galaxy than to the local interstellar medium. I will investigate how the energy injected by the GC's supernovae and, possibly, the resident super-massive black hole, accelerates a unique population of cosmic rays, regulates star-formation, drives a wide-spread 'super-wind', and creates the 'Fermi Bubbles' recently discovered by NASA's orbiting gamma-ray telescope Fermi to extend more than thirty thousand lightyears above and below the GC. My research will elucidate the connections between these phenomena revealed at different wavelengths and apply this understanding to star-formation in the nuclei of external galaxies.