Dust in galaxies hosting gamma ray bursts

As part of the PEGaSUS project led by Observatoire de Paris, with CEA department of Astrophysics and Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, we are seeking candidates to fill a 2-year post-doctoral position at LAM, funded by the ANR/CNRS. The successful candidate will have got less than 2 years of post-doctoral contract before the time of appointment. He/she will work on the scientific exploitation of the data from the SVOM satellite, in collaboration with the 3 institutes of the PeGaSUS project.

Long Gamma Ray Bursts (LGRB)  are unique probes of dust in high redshift galaxies. The SVOM satellite will be launched mid 2024 and will detect  new  LGRB  which will also be observed with dedicated ground-based follow-up facilities. The  imprint of dust along the line of sight of these bursts will be used to determine the extinction curve inside their host galaxies. The analysis of the most distant LGRB detected by SVOM should bring constraints on dust production mechanisms. in the early universe.

The aim of the post-doc project  is to connect the dust grain properties deduced from the extinction curves measured along the line of sight of LGRB with the properties of the host galaxy and its global dust obscuration which reshapes its observed spectral emission. The post-doctoral fellow will work at simulating dusty LGRB host galaxies using zoom-in numerical hydrodynamical simulations and at performing a radiative transfer post processing with SKIRT, in order to implement dust properties deduced from the afterglow observations in simulated objects reproducing the diversity of LGRB host  galaxies. The results of these simulations will then be compared with the observations of LGRB hosts  and of their afterglow to constrain  the dust properties of galaxies at global and local scales. 

The work will be performed in collaboration with the SKIRT team in Ghent and the post-doctoral fellow will be member of the SVOM team.