Feedback in Young Stellar Clusters

Current theories of star formation can describe the formation and evolution of isolated, young low-mass stars well, but struggle to explain the origin of massive stars- forming in clustered environments with a variety of energetic feedback processes. The goal of this research project is to build an empirical theory of massive star formation by observing massive protostars in the early stages of their formation and evolution. This will require analysing high-resolution data from (sub)mm and cm-wavelength radio telescopes, in particular the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). The radio frequency data will make the observation of young highly-embedded massive protostars possible. Both continuum and line emission will be used to trace the gas distribution and kinematics in protoclusters, providing an insight to the various physical processes involved in massive star formation, including mass accretion and outflows. The observational results will be compared with simulated observations of numerical models of massive star and cluster formation.