2026 Project Description

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What is the Nature of Protostellar Disk Formation? A Comparison between the Distributions of Protostellar Disk Radii in Observed and Synthetic Populations

Keywords:

Supervisors

Travis J. Thieme, Hsi-Wei Yen
Find out more about supervisors on ASIAA website

Task Description and Goals

The formation of protostars from the collapse of a dense, molecular cloud core is crucial to understanding the formation of our own solar system. While gravity is the main driver of star formation, magnetic fields, turbulence and non-ideal MHD effects play a crucial role in determining the efficiency of angular momentum transfer from the collapsing envelope to the forming protostellar disk. Therefore, these effects influence the properties of protostellar disks, like the protostellar disk radius, and may vary between different star-forming environments.

In this project, we will compare the distributions of protostellar disk radii from several observed star-forming regions with a sample of protostellar disk radii measurements from a suite of publicly available numerical simulations.

The goals of this project are as follows:

1. Compare the observed distributions of protostellar disk radii in newly sampled star-forming regions with measurements from publicly available numerical simulations of molecular clouds under different physics and at different times.
2. Explore the effects of selection and observational bias on these distributions to understand their impacts.
3. Use the numerical simulation data to compare the protostellar mass vs. the disk radii at different time to compare to a recent observational study and see how the slope changes over time between models with different physics.

This project is ideal for undergraduate students interested in star formation, observational astronomy, and data analysis, and offers hands-on experience working with real astronomical data from world-class facilities.

Required Background

Basic knowledge of Physics and Astronomy. Experience in Linux/Unix systems and programming using Python is desirable.