• Associate professor, Physics
• Faculty fellow, McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

Krawczynski

• Ph.D. in Physics at University of Hamburg
• M.S. in physics at University of Hamburg

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Extremely high energy Pinpointing origin of gamma rays from a supermassive black hole July 2, 2009 -- Download An international collaboration of 390 scientists reports the discovery of an outburst of very-high-energy gamma radiation from the giant radio galaxy Messier 87 (M 87), accompanied by a strong rise of the radio flux measured from the direct vicinity of its supermassive black hole. The combined results give first experimental evidence that particles are accelerated to extremely high energies in the immediate vicinity of a supermassive black hole and then emit the observed gamma rays. The gamma rays have energies a trillion times higher than the energy of visible light. Washington University in St. Louis physicists helped coordinate this cooperative project, the results of which appear in the July 2 Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

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Professor Krawczynski works on the development of the space-borne Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST). The mission is designed to survey the entire X-ray sky every 95 minutes. It has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of how supermassive black holes form and grow. Furthermore, it will be an ideal observatory for detecting very distant explosions (gamma-ray bursts).

In his laboratory, Professor Krawczynski fabricates and tests thick Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) semiconductor detectors for space-borne X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes. The detectors achieve excellent spatial and energy resolutions without cryogenic cooling. The group specializes on the fabrication of pixelated detectors using photolithographic techniques and pioneered several novelties such as "electrically isolated'" steering grids that steer electrons to the detector pixels while suppressing grid-pixel currents, which deteriorate the detectors' energy resolutions.