Harnessing Gaia data to understand the accretion history of the Milky Way.

盖亚卫星继续提供有史以来最精确的银河系恒星天文测量信息。我计划利用这一点，结合互补的光度和光谱调查来探索银河系的形成和演化。我的目标是分析和确定银河系暗物质晕的分布和结构，从恒星的运动学受势约束。我们已经知道，晕星拥有大量关于星系如何形成及其吸积历史的宝贵信息。暗物质成分肯定会包含更多关于银河系过去的细节。我还将致力于寻找和描述光晕中的子结构，并了解它的起源，这有助于改善对星系质量函数的低质量端的限制。鉴于星系光度测量的通量限制，这种类型的分析只能在银河系和最近的本地星系群中进行。我将对盖亚数据进行的另一个途径是搜索和分类强烈变化的天体物理物体。有几种类型的变星对银河系动力学的研究非常有用，因为它们的周期-光度关系很好，改进这些天体的数据集将是非常有益的。增加观察到的高变异性agn和更多外来瞬态的种群可以显著提高我们对这些系统和事件的理解。在天体物理学界为LSST的首次观测做准备时，这些信息可能会被证明是非常有价值的。

The Gaia satellite continues to provide the most accurate astrometric information on Milky Way stars ever produced. I plan to utilise this in conjunction with complementary photometric and spectroscopic surveys to probe the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. I aim to analyse and determine the distribution and structure of the Milky Way dark matter halo from kinematics of stars bound by the potential. We already know that halo stars hold an abundance of valuable information about how the galaxy formed and it's accretion history. The dark matter component will certainly contain more details about the Milky Way's past. I will also be working on finding and characterising substructure in the halo and understanding it's origins which can help to improve constraints on the low mass end of the galaxy mass function. Given the flux limitations of galaxy photometric surveys, this type of analysis can only realistically be performed in the Milky Way and nearest local group galaxies. Another avenue I will be pursuing with Gaia data is searching for and classifying strongly varying astrophysical objects. Several types of variable stars in particular are incredibly useful for studies in Milky Way dynamics due to their well constrained period-luminosity relations and improving our datasets of these objects will be extremely beneficial. Increasing the observed populations of high variability AGNs and more exotic transients can significantly improve our understanding of these systems and events. This information may prove extremely valuable as the astrophysics community prepares for first light of LSST.