Radiation Pressure–Driven Acceleration and Survival of Cold Gas

This project explores how radiation pressure accelerates cold gas and determines the conditions under which such gas can withstand shear forces and remain intact. Using radiation–hydrodynamic simulations, it aims to clarify when radiation pressure aids entrainment versus when it leads to cloud disruption.

Radiation pressure from young stars or AGN is often invoked as a mechanism to accelerate cold gas, yet its role in enabling — or preventing — the long-term survival of this gas remains poorly understood. Competing processes such as shear, instabilities, and radiative cooling complicate the dynamics, and current theories do not reliably predict when radiation pressure helps preserve clouds versus tearing them apart.
In this project, you will conduct radiation–hydrodynamic simulations to study how cold gas clouds respond to radiation pressure under a range of luminosities, optical depths, and ambient conditions. By identifying the regimes in which clouds accelerate, remain coherent, or fragment, the project will shed light on the physical pathways through which radiation pressure shapes multiphase outflows.