Job description
The Theory Group of SUBATECH (Nantes, France) invites candidates to apply for a PhD fellowship, starting fall 2015, for 36 months, in the domain of High Energy Nuclear Physics (Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions).

Context
The early universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang appeared to be in a state of deconfined quarks and gluons, which only later combined to form protons, neutrons and eventually atoms and molecules. Colliding heavy ions provides (on a small scale) similar conditions, and there is little doubt that such a plasma has been created in heavy ion collisions at the RHIC and the LHC colliders. Many features can be explained by modelling a hydrodynamically expanding quark gluon plasma. Recently, the studies have been extended to smaller systems (proton-proton, proton-nucleus collisions) and smaller energies. Surprisingly, the plasma signatures have been observed also for these systems, and it will be crucial for the field to understand in a quantitative fashion the energy and system size dependence.

Our competence
In our theory group, there is a strong activity concerning Monte Carlo simulations of relativistic collisions. The EPOS model has been constructed to simulate heavy ion collisions, but also proton-proton and proton-nucleus scattering. We implemented in particular the same hydrodynamical expansion features for all systems (the model has been presented in a plenary talk at the Quark Matter 2014 conference as “unified approach”).

Thesis work
We studied so far mainly LHC energies. What needs to be done is the extension of the approach to lower energies, in particular to investigate and try to understand the large amount of data at lower RHIC energies (the so-call RHIC beam energy scan). This is most interesting, since we expect here to touch the critical point of the QCD phase diagram. To properly treat collisions at lower energies, it will be crucial to extend our equation of state to more baryon rich matter. We hope to pin down the equation of state (not well constrained from theory) by realistic simulations compared to a large amount of data. Another important issue: small systems at the RHIC (dAu, HeAu).

The candidate
should have skills in informatics, a good knowledge of particle physics, and interest in analyzing experimental data by using and improving a numerical tool (like EPOS).
A master thesis in theoretical or experimental high energy (nuclear) physics could be useful (but is not mandatory).

Contact (before March 31, 2015)
Prof. K. Werner,   Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.