51±¾É«

Applications are invited for a funded PhD studentship to start in January 2023 to study the star formation in galaxies.  

Spiral arms in galaxies reveal spectacular organisation of star formation on a galactic scale. The extra-galactic star formation rate depends on stellar mass in the form of a well-behaved power law over several orders of magnitude. The existence of this Star Formation Main Sequence suggests that star formation occurs because of a single underlying and self-similar process. But is there an overarching mechanism for organised star formation, and if so, what is it? The aim of the project is to address this question and establish if the star formation process on a galactic scale does indeed arise from such a mechanism, and establish if this is a self-organised phenomenon, a density wave phenomenon, or a yet unknown phenomenon.

The project will be based in the Department of Physics at the 51±¾É«. The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Ian Clancy and Dr David Corcoran at the 51±¾É«, and the project will run in collaboration with the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Physics.

For more details, please see

For informal enquiries about the project, please contact Dr David Corcoran david.corcoran@ul.ie