Secular Public

Dynamically Inverting the Spiral Response of Galactic Discs

Astrophysical Context

Galactic archeology is concerned with constraining the past state of galaxies while looking at its present kinematic structure. It is classically addressed using the chemistry of stars as time capsules.

Upshot

The purpose of this internship will be to rely on linearised kinematic equations matched to the current dynamical state of a galactic disc to reconstruct its past perturbations. The key ingredient is to formulate the inverse problem in the eigen-frame of the response matrix of the underlying disc, so as to decouple the time evolution of each mode. Leverage is provided by the measured spectrum of angular frequencies, which encode differentially past tides.

Requirement

Strong interest in theoretical astronomy, analytical and numerical work.

Framework

The internship will be co-supervised by Jean-Baptiste Fouvry and Christophe Pichon as part of the segal ANR (www.secular-evolution.org). It could lead to a PhD within that framework.