Dear colleagues,
We would be grateful for your help in recruiting a suitable candidate for a
PhD studentship to work on a project: Molecular dynamics and coherent
control of benzene.
This studentship is funded by the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network:
Ultrafast control of quantum systems by strong laser fields (FASTQUAST)
http://icb.u-bourgogne.fr/fastquast/
It will be supervised by Professor Helen Fielding and Dr Jonathan Underwood
at
University College London, UK
Research area:
The detailed investigation and control of quantum mechanical processes is a
major goal of science for the 21st century. The chemical, physical,
biological and material properties of matter are determined at the molecular
(i.e. quantum) level so it is natural to seek to understand and control
quantum processes using advanced tools from spectroscopy and quantum
mechanics. This is the main scientific goal of the work carried out in both
our groups.
The typical vibration period of a covalent bond in a molecule is of the
order of tens of femtoseconds (where 1 femtosecond is 1 billionth of a
millionth of a second). If we wish to observe processes on this timescale we
need to employ femtosecond lasers. The application of femtosecond lasers to
probe molecular dynamics was pioneered by Ahmed Zewail in the 1990's and its
significance was recognised by the award of the 1999 Chemistry Nobel Prize.
The "grand challenge" for the 21st century is to use femtosecond lasers to
control molecular processes. This particular project will employ advanced
femtosecond laser technology to investigate the detailed quantum molecular
dynamics of benzene, the prototypical organic molecule, and to develop a new
experiment to control the photochemistry and photophysics of benzene using
intense laser fields.
PhD studentship
A PhD studentship is available to work in this exciting area from October
2008. The project is funded by the EU Marie-Curie Initial Training Network
FASTQUAST and will be supervised by Professor Helen Fielding (Department of
Chemistry) and Dr Jonathan Underwood (Department of Physics). UCL has
state-of-the-art femtosecond laser laboratories, a lively atmosphere and
this particular post comes with a competitive salary and the opportunity for
international collaboration and travel.
To be eligible, candidates must be a citizen of any country that is eligible
for Marie-Curie training schemes, but they must not be citizens of the UK
and must not have resided in or carried out their main activity in the UK
for more that 12 months in the last 3 years. The candidate must have a
masters degree in chemistry or physics and should have an interest some or
all of: lasers, coherent light-matter interactions, spectroscopy, dynamics.
The PhD student will gain experience in state-of-the-art weak and strong
field laser control, femtosecond laser spectroscopy, photoelectron imaging
and theory.
If you are interested, please contact either of us by email with a CV, the
names and addresses of 2 referees and a completed UCL postgraduate
application form
www.ucl.ac.uk/admission/graduate-study/application-admission/.
Contact details:
Professor Helen Fielding, Department of Chemistry, UCL (Tel: 020 7679 5575)
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Helen Fielding
Department of Chemistry
University College London
20 Gordon Street
London WC1H 0AJ
Tel: 020 76795575 (office); 020 76791101 (lab 121); 020 76794705 (lab 122)
http://www.chem.ucl.ac.uk/people/fielding/index.html
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