Made-to-measure modelling of the Milky Way

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to map the position and motion of nearly 1.8 billion stars has revolutionized our view of the Milky Way. But, 1.8 billion stars is still only 1% of the stars in our Galaxy, and a large part of the Milky Way remains unseen. We need accurate models of our Galaxy to help us understand the data, and the part of the Galaxy which we can’t map directly. 

Creating a N-body galaxy simulation of a Milky Way-like disc galaxy is easy. But making an accurate model of a specific galaxy such as the Milky Way is much more challenging. Made-to-Measure (M2M) is a method to tailor a galaxy simulation to match data, and it can be used to build a full model of the Milky Way from the Gaia data (Hunt et al. 2014). 

However, there are no public M2M algorithms, none that currently include chemistry, and they are all built on older infrastructure. 

In this project you would develop a modern, GPU accelerated chemodynamic M2M algorithm and use it to build a next generation simulation of the Milky Way, tailored to data from Gaia and state-of-the-art ground-based surveys such as SDSS & WEAVE.  

The project would suit someone with an interest in Galactic dynamics & archaeology, and development of astrophysics simulation software, including GPU programming. You would learn software development skills as well as theoretical astrophysics, working within a friendly and welcoming department with lots of complementary expertise on galaxies, stars and dark matter. 

Open to both UK and international candidates.

Up to 30% of our UKRI-funded studentships can be awarded to candidates paying international rate fees. Find out more about eligibility.

You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our Physics PhD programme.