State-to-state chemistry in space

You will work within the Quantum Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Division at KU Leuven (https://chem.kuleuven.be/en/research/qcpc)
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Project

One of the keys to determine the physical conditions prevailing in astrophysical environments as well as their chemical evolution is the knowledge of the excitation conditions and chemistry of astrophysical molecules. Despite significant progresses made over the last decades, there is still a huge lack of collisional and reactive data for these species, which prevents to make the most of nowadays highly resolved observations performed with ground-based telescopes such as ALMA or space-based telescope such as JWST. In addition, recent astrochemical models have highlighted the need of using state-to-state rate coefficients for molecular collisions and reactions in order to fully exploit recent observations of highly excited molecules. The calculations of such data using exact quantum methods are not possible mainly because of their computational cost. Hence, important methodological developments remain to be done in order to provide astronomers with reliable data. This thesis subject fits into this context and is dedicated to the study of the collisional excitation and reactivity of astrophysical ions (e.g. CH+, CH2+, H2O+, HeH+, …) detected in astrophysical and atmospherical environments. In particular, the development and the use of statistical methods should enable the possibility to obtain precise state-to-state data for the study of media of astrophysical and atmospherical interest. Participation in the interpretation of observations will be a natural extension of this project and will allow the candidate to investigate the impact of these new data on the astrophysical / atmospherical modeling.

Profile

The selected candidate must have a solid background in fundamental physics and chemistry. She/He must have a good knowledge in atomic and molecular physics as well as a good knowledge of programming tools. Knowledge and interest about astrochemistry is an advantage.

Offer

The joint PhD project will be co-supervised by François Lique (Rennes, France) and Jérôme Loreau (Leuven, Belgium). The PhD candidate is expected to spend ~75% of his/her research time at the University of Rennes and 25% in KU Leuven.

Possibility of participating to teaching activities will be offered to the PhD candidate. 

Interested?

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