2025-12-19
imprs-p-office[AT]aei.mpg.de
Hannover/Potsdam, Germany
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI) in Potsdam, Germany, announces the opening of several PhD positions at the IMPRS “Gravity at the Extreme: from Theory to Observation”. We are particularly interested in hiring creative, proactive and motivated candidates who flourish at working in a vibrant, interdisciplinary and synergistic group. Successful candidates will join one of the scientific departments at the AEI in Potsdam, either the “Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity” (ACR) or the “Computational Relativistic Astrophysics” (CRA) department.
The ACR and CRA research divisions at the AEI in Potsdam operate three high-performance compute clusters to model gravitational-wave sources (binary black holes, neutron star binaries, and stellar collapse of massive stars), electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves, high-energy astrophysical phenomena, and to carry out waveform development, and data analysis of gravitational waves observed by LIGO and Virgo detectors.
Research Topics and research environment:
PhD theses can cover a broad spectrum of topics in gravitational-wave astronomy, high-energy astrophysics and fundamental physics, such as:
* analytical modeling of gravitational dynamics and radiation (within post-Newtonian theory, post-Minkowskian theory, gravitational self-force, black-hole perturbation theory, and effective-one-body theory),
* numerical-relativity, most notably simulations of compact objects in general relativity and alternatives,
* interpretation and analysis of data from gravitational-wave detectors on the ground (LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA),
* development of pipelines and data-analysis methods for future detectors in space (LISA) and on the ground (Einstein Telescope),
* acceleration techniques for gravitational-wave inference, including machine learning,
* cosmography with gravitational waves (including dark energy, dark matter, gravitational lensing),
* tests of gravity in the strong-field and highly dynamical regime
* modelling neutron star mergers as high-energy phenomena,
* modelling electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves,
* exploring neutron-star equation of state,
* exploring nucleosynthesis,
* stellar collapse to a black hole and a neutron star, and
* modelling gamma-ray bursts.
Successful applicants will conduct their research projects at the AEI in Potsdam, and they will have to enrol and receive their PhD degree from either the University of Potsdam or the Humboldt University in Berlin. The expected duration of the PhD program is three to four years.