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Galactic archaeology is the study of the formation history of the Milky Way through the motions, ages, and chemical composition of stars. The study of Galactic archaeology requires accurately estimating spectroscopic stellar parameters and abundances (collectively known as labels), which is currently limited due to the incompleteness and limited accuracy of atomic line parameters and the spectroscopic analysis methods being slow and/or inaccurate. During my PhD, I will develop tools for advanced spectrum synthesis and analysis methods that are both fast and accurate, and will furthermore quantify systematic errors. I will apply these tools to two large spectroscopic surveys. In project 1, I aim to compute synthetic profiles of the Ca infrared triplet that include chromospheric effects, which will provide more accurate metallicities, Ca abundances, and radial velocities. In project 2, I will create a rapid but accurate pipeline that measures stellar labels whilst propagating systematic and observational errors for the GALAH spectroscopic survey. In project 3, I will push the limits on extracting information from spectra with limited resolution and wavelength range in the context of the Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrograph, which will yield radial velocity estimates for 150 million stars. Combined these projects will provide catalogues which will show an unprecedented new picture of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. |
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