The disturbances of the outer Milky Way

To understand the Milky Way better, this project will build better computer models of its dynamics and compare them to what we can observe in the Milky Way. The timescales on which stars' orbits change are millions of years, so we are inferring everything from the observed current positions and velocities of stars, which requires a model. The day-to-day work of the project will be running simulations or dynamical models of the Milky Way; analysing the data in comparison to other models, and to what we know about the Milky Way; and further developing and improving the models as we learn what they are missing. A good grasp of mechanics would be valuable, as well as some computer programming experience, but these can and will be improved during the PhD.