Supervisor: Prof Victor Debattista
(1) Understanding the Gould Belt as a bending wave in simulations
Star formation in the Solar Neighbourhood has long been seen to occur in a disc, called the Gould Belt, which is tilted by about 20 degrees to the plane of the Milky Way. Although this has been known since the time of John Herschel, the exact cause of this is not yet understood. One possibility is that the Gould Belt is just one manifestation of bends in the disc of the Milky Way which are propagating as waves in the Solar Neighbourhood. We recently showed that such bending waves can be recognised in our state-of-the-art simulations. The goal of this project will be to compare in detail observations and simulations, and to provide predictions from the simulations which may finally resolve the mystery of the Gould Belt.
(2) Predicting the MOONS and Gaia data from simulations
The combination of MOONS and Gaia satellite data will give us a detailed 3D view of the velocities in the bulge, bar and disc of the Milky Way. This project will largely involve using our high resolution simulations to predict the view of the bulge, bar and disc that will result from the upcoming MOONS data. These results will enable us to quickly interpret data from these surveys.
(3) What causes the bending waves in isolated galaxies?
We generally think of disc galaxies as being flat, but one of the exciting discoveries with the Gaia satellite has been that near the Sun the disc has bending waves. These are small bends in the otherwise flat disc that propagate as waves. Simulations show that isolated galaxies develop small scale bending waves. The origin of these waves is unclear by may be related to star formation. In this project we will use specially run very high resolution simulations to try to detect bending waves as they are born and to follow them, in order to better understand how these waves arise. This project will largely the analysis of simulations.