The University of Luxembourg aspires to be one of Europe’s most highly regarded universities with a distinctly international and interdisciplinary character .

It fosters the cross-fertilisation of research and teaching , is relevant to its country, is known worldwide for its research and teaching in targeted areas, and is establishing itself as an innovative model for contemporary European Higher Education.

The Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM) contributes multidisciplinary expertise in the fields of Mathematics , Physics , Engineering , Computer Science , Life Sciences and Medicine .

Through its dual mission of teaching and research, the FSTM seeks to generate and disseminate knowledge and train new generations of responsible citizens, in order to better understand, explain and advance society and environment we live in.

The Department of Physics and Materials Science (DPhyMS) at Uni.lu is a quickly growing physics department composed of 18 dynamic research groups, spanning the broad domain of condensed matter, molecular physics, biophysics, and quantum physics.

Your Role

Two postdoctoral positions are available in the Chair for Theoretical Chemical Physics (TCP), led by Prof. Alexandre Tkatchenko in the Department of Physics and Materials Science (DPhyMS) at the University of Luxembourg ().

These positions are embedded within the FNR-CORE grant "Broadly Applicable Methods for van der Waals Interactions in Molecules and Materials".

We are looking for motivated, independent, and skilled scientists to join our group. As part of the TCP group, researchers will have ample opportunity to exchange ideas, transfer knowledge, and to pick up new expertise.

Our publications (https : / / scholar.google.pl / citations?user o2t1Pv8AAAAJ&hl en) provide perspective on our research directions.

We have two positions focused on bridging quantum field theory (QFT) and atomistic modeling :

i) "QFT Perspective on Intermolecular Interactions"

Science 351, 1171 (2016) . However, much less is known about the QED and QFT effects on intermolecular interactions. This project aims to develop a practically-applicable QED / QFT approach based on quantum Drude oscillators for atomic response arXiv : 2101.

08701 . Once accomplished, various QED / QFT effects will be studied with the aim to systematically understand their importance in the context of intermolecular interactions.

ii) "Beyond Perturbative QFT for Atomic Polarization"

The vacuum state in QED / QFT is typically expressed as plane waves and the effect of atoms / molecules on the vacuum state is studied perturbatively or as a boundary condition.

This project aims to develop non-perturbative techniques for the interaction between the QED / QFT vacuum and atomic / molecular systems.

arXiv : 2007.02992 or Lamb shift for molecules see e.g. https : / / www.nature.com / articles / s41467-020-20473-w .

Your Profile

The positions are open to strong applicants with backgrounds in physics, mathematics and / or a multidisciplinary background (PhD degree).

We Offer

In Short