PhD student Positions in computer science and/or computational astrophysics

The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg is seeking dedicated and highly qualified PhD students with computational and/or astrophysical backgrounds to join the research group led by Prof. Hubert Klahr, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Project TiPPi: TURBULENCE, PEBBLES AND PLANETESIMALS: THE ORIGIN OF MINOR BODIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

The solar system’s minor bodies, asteroids, trojans, comets and Kuiper belt objects, are leftover planetary building blocks called planetesimals. The largest of these planetesimals grew into planets through collisions and the accretion of large grains called pebbles. Despite their importance we still do not know where and when they were born in the solar nebula.

Therefore we will develop innovative types of numerical experiment connecting three stages of planetesimal formation in three interlinked work packages. WP1: Lagrangian filter methods for the analysis of turbulence, combined with Machine Learning for pebble sizes and dust opacities, WP2: a hybrid Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement code for the solar nebula connected internally with a tree-code for the pebbles and WP3: an implicit Lagrangian fluid method to treat the elasticity and porosity evolution of the forming planetesimals.

MPIA researchers have preferential access to our super-computing facilities in Garching, including our VERA cluster with 110 nodes of 72 cores each plus 3 nodes with 4 Nvidia A100-40GB GPUs each, dedicated to theory groups of MPI Astronomy as well as to the MPG - RAVEN and COBRA HPC clusters.

Your Tasks

WP1: Development and application of a machine learning based predictor for dust and ice particle size distributions for three-dimensional radiation and magneto-hydro dynamical models of disks around young stars based on measured turbulence properties.

WP2: Integration, testing and application of a Lagrangian N-body self-gravity scheme for Eulerian three-dimensional radiation and magneto-hydro dynamical models of disks around young stars.

WP3: The successful candidate will work on developing, testing, documenting and applying novel implicit time integrators for Lagrangian hydro codes in the astrophysical context to study the shape, internal structure and dynamical properties of the primordial asteroid and comet populations. The approach will explore two possibilities: Implementing the missing gravity physics in open source implicit Lagrangian codes like SPlisHSPlasH and alternatively developing an implicit integrator for GIZMO.

 You will be part of a dedicated project comprising the PI, three post docs and three PhD students in total with the joint goal to self consistently form asteroids and comets in a turbulent solar nebula. The ERC group is part of the theory group (headed by Hubert Klahr) within the Planet and Star Formation department. Our Postdoctoral researchers will find a scientifically stimulating environment at MPIA with theorists and observers in the fields of planet and star formation, exo-planetary atmospheres, galaxies and cosmology. If suited you are also welcome to apply for membership in the  International Max Planck Research School for    Astronomy and Cosmic Physics       at the University of Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD)