ALMAGAL: The ALMA Study of High-Mass Protocluster Formation in the Milky Way

Understanding the formation of massive stars is central to wide range of astrophysics, from the star formation history of the Universe to the physical and chemical evolution of galaxies and the origin of black holes, pulsars and gamma ray bursts. ALMAGAL is an ALMA Large Programme to observe 1000 young, high mass regions to study the formation and evolution of high mass stars and their associated stellar clusters.

This PhD project will involve the analysis of the ALMAGAL observations to study the properties of the sources detected, the dynamics of the regions and their environments, and the evolutionary status of the protostars.

ALMAGAL is large international collaboration and there may be opportunities to spend time working at some of the partner institutions. There will also be opportunities to take part in, and potentially, lead follow-up observations of the sources studied with ALMAGAL. The results of the analysis of the ALMAGAL observations will be compared with numerical simulations of massive star formation to help constrain the initial conditions required to form the most massive stars.