Post-doctoral position on multi-scale Simulations of solar energetic particle injection and inner heliosphere propagation

The Laboratory of Plasma Physics (LPP) invites applications for a postdoctoral research position to investigate one major challenge in heliophysics: how energetic particles are injected from the solar corona into the heliosphere and how their earliest propagation shapes the particle populations eventually detected near Earth and throughout the Solar System.

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) produced during flares and eruptive events can travel across the heliosphere within minutes, posing significant hazards to spacecraft, astronauts, and technological infrastructure. Yet, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. How do particles escape from their acceleration sites? How are they injected onto open magnetic field lines? How does the evolving coronal magnetic field modify their trajectories before they enter the solar wind? To what extent does the dynamic of the large-scale magnetic field during the eruptions influence the timing, intensity, and spatial extent of Solar Energetic Particle events observed near Earth?

To address these questions, we developed and a Particle-in-Cell (PIC) code that is now coupled to the state-of-the art 3D MHD code ARMS dedicated to study solar eruptions. This new multi-scale code has been developed for the MANTIS project which aims Modelling the acceleration and escape of energetic particles during solar flare and eruptive events.

The successful candidate will use this new-generation multi-scale code in order to design solar flare and eruptions models that combine the global evolution of the corona with kinetic descriptions of energetic particles. This unique numerical approach enables the self-consistent study of particle injection and the earliest stages of heliospheric transport in realistic eruptive environments.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to both the development of advanced computational methods and to our understanding of the physical processes that govern the escape of energetic particles from their acceleration site close to the Sun into the open heliosphere.

(Transmis par Sophie Masson)