X-ray astronomy at XMM-Newton SSC

    The astrophysics department at Saclay, which is situated 30 km south of Paris, is a major space astrophysics laboratory and is also involved in ground-based instrumentation.
Our institute played a major role in the hardware development and calibration of the EPIC MOS cameras on XMM Newton and participates in the SSC consortium that is responsible for the catalogue of XMM-Newton sources.
At high energies, the institute provides important contributions to Integral, Fermi and the future SVOM and Athena missions, as well as the HESS and CTA TeV instruments.
Other major projects are JWST/MIRI, Euclid, ELT/METIS.

    We invite applications for a position in which the candidate is expected to work half-time on our activities in the XMM SSC consortium, and half-time on science related to our research interests.

    Our activities in the XMM SSC consortium include the EPIC MOS data analysis software, the EPIC MOS in flight calibration, screening the products generated by the data processing pipeline and testing the catalogue products.

    Our research interests are primarily in two domains:
- clusters of galaxies (M. Arnaud, G. Pratt), where we have recently started exploiting a 3 Ms XMM Heritage program on z < 0.5 Planck SZ-selected clusters, a large international collaboration of which M. Arnaud is one of the two PIs;
- supernova remnants (J. Ballet, F. Acero), where our interests lie mostly around detailed studies of nearby SNRs.

The position is funded by the French space agency CNES.
The starting date is early 2019, but applications to start a few months later will be considered.
Funding is available for two years, with a possible extension for an additional year.
The net salary is approximately 2000 euros/month (2200 if more than two years after PhD).

To apply please submit a curriculum vitae, a publication list, a summary of previous research, and a statement describing how you plan to get involved in the team.
In addition, please arrange for two letters of recommendation to be sent before the deadline.