Post-doctoral position on dust evolution in protoplanetary disks

The Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon is offering a 2-year research-only post-doctoral position, as part of the CYPRESS (Carbon in Young PRE-planetary SystemS) project, supported by a French ANR grant. The project brings together observers and modelers from the Astrophysics departments of Nice, Paris-Saclay, Grenoble and Lyon.

Recent research reveals that the early Solar System experienced a major, unexplained depletion of solid carbon in its innermost regions, potentially contributing to the habitability of one of its terrestrial planets. The CYPRESS consortium will combine observations from the VLTI/MATISSE instrument and its unique angular resolution, probing the inner regions of protoplanetary disks, with data from other facilities such as ALMA or the JWST, and state-of-the art radiative transfer modeling to paint a global picture of the solid carbon reservoirs.

The post-doctoral researcher will conduct hydrodynamical simulations of the vertical evolution of porous carbon and silicate grains in disks with the PHANTOM code and link the observed surface abundances to the mid-plane composition. Comparing our findings on Carbon/Silicon profiles with the Solar System data, we aim to better understand the chemical evolution of disks and its connection to habitability.