Broadband Radio Recombination Line spectroscopy in the era of FAST & SKA

Research training in advanced radio astronomy techniques. Exchange program for Chinese PhD students.

The richness of the RRL datasets that will become possible with the SKA & FAST will require new analysis techniques and skills. Extending current non-LTE models to cope with hundreds of spectral lines across multiple atomic species will enable new constraints to be placed upon the density, temperature, metallicity and ionising sectrum of astrophysical plasmas across the Milky Way. Similarly, it will be possible to exploit the well-understood physics of the lines to develop adaptive stacking techniques to extract faint lines from spectral datacubes and to maximise the mapping speed of the facility. In this proposal I seek funding for a collaborative PhD project with China to develop these techniques and to train the next generation of radio astronomers to fully exploit the RRL capabilities that will be brought about by SKA & FAST.