The successful candidate will join a strong and highly-motivated research team with an excellent funding track-record in competitive national, international and European grants, including European Research Council Consolidator Grant “Beyond Static Molecules: Modeling Quantum Fluctuations in Complex Molecular Environments”.

 

The scientific topics of research range from machine learning approaches for describing molecular potential-energy surfaces, development of improved quantum methods for the description of non-covalent interactions, path-integral approaches to dynamics of molecular systems, and synergies between these methods to interpret puzzling experimental observations and predict new phenomena in complex molecular systems.

The University of Luxembourg is a young, dynamic, and well-funded university and is rapidly growing in international rankings. Luxembourg is a small European country with a very high quality of living and is bordered by France, Belgium, and Germany.

The position is open to strong applicants with backgrounds in physics, mathematics, computer science, and/or multidisciplinary background. UL and DPhyMS strive to increase the share of female PhD students. Therefore, we explicitly encourage women to apply. We offer competitive salary and attractive working environment in one of the most enjoyable European cities ( http://www.euraxess.lu ).

 

The PhD work will concentrate on developing the path-integral formalism to large molecular systems beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Originally introduced by Feynman, the path-integral approach has led to a variety of different techniques with diverse applications in physics and chemistry. This project includes a path-integral description of the Molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect caused by the fact that nuclei undergo a vector potential related to the geometric phase of electronic states (especially, due to conical intersections of the potential energy surfaces). The PhD student will learn various aspects considering the problem from different points of view (related to math, physics, and chemistry) as well as its connection to other topics (like the exchange interaction between indistinguishable particles and non-Abelian electromagnetism or Yang-Mills theory).  

 

For more information and applications contact:

Prof. Dr. Alexandre Tkatchenko ([email protected])