Doctoral Studies in Extragalactic Astronomy

We offer PhD positions in the following areas. For more information, please get in touch.

Starburst Galaxies

Starburst galaxies are galaxies undergoing an episode of star formation that is so intense that they would exhaust their gas reservoirs in significantly less than a Hubble time. It is likely, since these episodes are unsustainable, that these events are triggered. Our group is undertaking several projects relating to intensely star-forming galaxies; these include the Lyman alpha Reference Sample (Hayes et al 2013, 2014, Östlin et al 2014) and projects that aim to study warm gas in galaxy halos through emission lines of hot metals (Hayes et al 2016).

Both are major projects that are based upon Hubble Space Telescope data (both imaging and spectroscopy) and observations from several other telescopes, the most significant of which are optical integral field spectrographs such as MUSE at the ESO Very Large Telescope and GMOS at the Gemini Observatory. Specifically the PhD projects may be studies of the Lyman alpha (see Hayes 2015 for a review of the field) or O VI emission, or more general studies of feedback from star formation and the development of large-scale winds from galaxies.

Lyman alpha halos at high-redshift

Lyman alpha blobs/halos (LABs) are extremely luminous objects that glow mainly in emission from ionized gas, and are seen with the (redshifted) Lyman alpha emission line of hydrogen. The Lyα halos may be many times larger than the Milky Way. Some host luminous quasars, others are powered by star-forming galaxies, and some show almost no visible counterparts at other wavlengths, making them mysterious objects.

We offer PhD positions that target LABs using optical integral field spectrographs (MUSE at the ESO Very Large Telescope), and also with novel techniques for interpreting the Lyα, such as polarimetry (Hayes et al 2011), for which data also come from instruments at the ESO Very Large Telescope.

The Low Surface Brightness Universe