Ekaterina Semenova

semenova @ mpia.de

NLTE analysis of abundances in Galactic populations

During my PhD I aim to look at the stellar populations of the Milky Way and its satellites in the framework of a three dimensional non-local thermodynamical (3D NLTE) radiative transfer. An opposite to the latter, an assumption of one dimensional local thermodynamic equilibrium (1D LTE) structure is one of the biggest source of uncertainty when it comes to the chemical composition of stars. While 3D NLTE approach offers an in-depth physical solution for the stellar radiation, it requires extensive computations resources, often too extensive and not available at the time being. In the course of my PhD I am working on developing the tools that will allow to solve 3D NLTE radiative transfer across the wide parameter space representing a whole stellar population. With that achieved we can look at the chemical evolution of the galaxies at a level of accuracy never achieved before.

Supervisor:    Maria Bergemann   (MPIA)