2-year post-doctoral position on spectroscopic studies of GRB afterglows and host galaxies

Applications are invited for a 2-year post-doctoral position to work with Susanna Vergani and her team at Paris Observatory, as part of the PEGaSUS (Probing and Exploring high-redshift Galaxies Spectroscopically Using SVOM gamma-ray bursts) project, funded by the ANR.
The project team is composed of three nodes led by Susanna Vergani (project PI, Paris Observatory), Veronique Buat (LAM, Marseille) and Emeric Le Floc’h (CEA-Irfu, Saclay). In addition to the researchers and PhD students of each unit, the team will include 4 post-docs funded by the project (including the one of this offer).

The selected candidate will work within the SVOM consortium and will be part of the Stargate collaboration. Her/his work will be mainly based on spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows and host galaxies obtained with ESO instruments (such as VLT/X-shooter and SOXS) and space telescopes (JWST).

She/he will participate in on-call shifts within the SVOM, Stargate and/or SOXS teams to act as Burst Advocate, and to react to GRB alerts to: activate follow-up observations, perform rapid data reduction, disseminate the results by GCNs.

The post-doc will be in charge of the data reduction and analysis of the observations to: measure the GRB redshift, determine the properties of the neutral gas of the host galaxy, study the abundance patterns of metals and look for signatures of peculiar nucleosynthesis, look for the emission of Lyman continuum photons, etc… . She /he will also perform comparisons of the observational results with the relevant simulations.

The overall aim is: (i) to study the properties of star-forming galaxies at high redshift, especially (but not only) their neutral gas and chemical enrichment; (ii) to infer information on the progenitors of the different classes of GRBs.

Requirements: PhD in astrophysics or similar; Good teamwork attitude; Good computing skills; Fluent oral and written English.

Expertise is required in one or more of the following fields:
-  GRB science
-  High-redshift galaxies
-  Study of systems along the lines of sight of GRBs (including their host galaxies) or quasars (QSO)
-  Data-reduction and analysis of optical / infrared spectroscopic observations of GRBs, QSOs, galaxies or extragalactic transient phenomena
-  Exploitation of simulations of high redshift galaxies