Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) – Postdoctoral Contract: SNSF Sinergia Project

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) invites applications for one postdoctoral contract to work at the IAC in the project “HPC-techniques for 3D modeling of resonance line polarization with partial frequency redistribution”. This research project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) within the framework of “Sinergia”, a programme promoting interdisciplinary collaboration between different applicants. This Sinergia grant involves the IAC, the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno (IRSOL, Locarno, Switzerland), the Institute of Computational Sciences (ICS, Lugano, Switzerland) and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR, Ondrejov, Czech Republic). Postdoctoral positions within the framework of this project will also be available at ICS and IRSOL.

The aim of the project is to combine competences and expertise in the fields of the generation and transfer of polarized radiation in magnetized plasmas, atomic physics, spectropolarimetry, computational sciences and high-performance computing (HPC). The goal is to develop novel accurate and robust parallel solution methods for the radiative transfer (RT) problem for polarized radiation in realistic three-dimensional (3D) models of the solar atmosphere, taking into account the effects of correlations between the incoming and outgoing photons in the scattering events (PRD effects, from partial frequency redistribution).

Starting from the radiative transfer code PORTA (Stepan & Trujillo Bueno 2013; A&A, 557, 143), the IAC post-doc will mainly focus on the development and application of a novel 3D radiative transfer code for modeling, by means of massively parallel supercomputers, the spectral line polarization produced by the joint action of anisotropic radiation pumping and the Hanle and Zeeman effects in the solar atmosphere, taking PRD effects into account.  The selected candidate will closely interact with the scientists and post-docs working in all the institutes involved in the project. Moreover, she/he will also benefit from scientific collaborations with the POLMAG group of the IAC (see www.iac.es/proyecto/polmag/ ).

The contract is expected to start in 2019 (exact starting date to be negotiated) and it will end at the conclusion of the Sinergia project (30.09.2022). Subsequently, it may be further extended for a total duration of four years.

Deadline for receiving applications is 2019 January 7.

For scientific enquiries please contact Javier Trujillo Bueno.

The announcement, with the information on how to apply, can be found at www.iac.es/info.php?op1=26&id=769