Post-doctoral position on the GALAXIES and DEIMOS beamlines within the XIMTEX ANR-21-CE29-0032 [...]

Soleil is the French national synchrotron facility, located on the Saclay Plateau near Paris. It is a multi-disciplinary instrument and a research laboratory, whose mission is to run research programs using synchrotron radiation, to develop state-of-the-art instrumentation on the beamlines, and to make those available to the scientific community. SOLEIL, a unique tool for both academic research and industrial applications across a wide range of disciplines including physics, biology, chemistry etc., is used by over 5000 researchers coming from France and abroad. It is based on a state-of-the-art synchrotron source, both in terms of brilliance and stability. The facility is a privately owned company employing about 500 people, founded by the CNRS and the CEA, and partner of the University Paris-Saclay.

Synchrotron SOLEIL has an opening for a post-doctoral position on the GALAXIES and DEIMOS beamlines, within the ANR-funded XIMTEX project, part of which involves the experimental investigation of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering and soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy on chiral molecular systems. The GALAXIES beamline has two end-stations providing both Hard X-Ray Photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) and Inelastic X-Ray Spectroscopy (IXS). The desired postdoctoral candidate will be involved in research performed at the IXS end-station within this new technique, known as RIXS-NCD (Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering – Natural Circular Dichroism), that has yet to be experimentally observed. In this technique, the incident x-ray energy is scanned across a particular 1s metal absorption edge, for both left- and right-handed circular polarisations while recording the corresponding Kα1 emission using a multi-crystal analyser spectrometer. The DEIMOS beamline is a soft X-ray absorption beamline dedicated to magnetic and natural circular and linear dichroism spectroscopies, namely XMCD, XMLD, XNCD and XNLD. The candidate will be involved in measurements performed on the 7 Tesla cryomagnetic end-station operated under UHV and at temperatures down to 2K. The aim of the project is to record X-ray Natural Circular Dichroism, a highly challenging spectroscopy based on the difference in absorption of left and right circular polarized photons, at L2,3 edges of transition metals. The XIMTEX consortium involves the ‘ICMCB’ (Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux) for material synthesis, the IMPMC (Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux) for development of theory and the SOLEIL and ESRF synchrotrons for experiments.

• Your main scientific mission working closely with the scientists of the GALAXIES and DEIMOS beamlines in the planning and participation of the XNCD and RIXS-NCD experiments. Part of the XNCD spectroscopy data on divalent MnII, CoII, NiII, ZnII chiral complexes have recently been acquired in the hard x-ray region. You will be an integral part of the experimental team performing XNCD on these model chiral complexes at the DEIMOS beamline in the soft x-ray region.
• You will also be charged with developing the new RIXS-NCD spectroscopy at GALAXIES in the hard x-ray region. This would involve improvements to the efficiency in experimental data collection through enhancements to the existing instrumentation or scanning procedures. In particular ‘real time’ data analysis routines would be extremely beneficial, given the relatively large number of samples sets to be analysed.
• You will use in-house beamtime at GALAXIES to assess RIXS-NCD capabilities by either measuring model chiral systems already measured using XNCD or on new chiral complexes.
• Ideas for new experiments will be strongly encouraged which could involve improvements on the experimental side (data acquisition, instrumentation etc.) or new ideas for chiral systems with the ICMCB crystal synthesis laboratory in Bordeaux.
• You will be strongly encouraged to present your scientific results at conferences and publish them in peer-reviewed journals.

The candidate should hold a Ph.D. in Materials Science, Chemistry or a related discipline. Previous experience in a synchrotron radiation center will be greatly appreciated.

The following aspects will be considered with the greatest attention:

• Proven knowledge of synchrotron x-ray radiation techniques, particularly in x-ray spectroscopy.
• Proven experimental and data analysis capabilities.
• Background in computer programming and in the writing of computational codes in Python for data treatment.
• Excellent organizational and communication skills.

The candidate must be fluent in English (written and spoken). Knowledge of French is also desirable but not mandatory and lessons are offered to non-native speakers.

The offer concerns a 1-year position within the XIMTEX funded program. The extension of the post-doctoral position up to one year is a possibility.

The position is localized to the SOLEIL synchrotron site (Paris-Saclay campus, Saint-Aubin).

Applications should include a motivation letter and Curriculum Vitae with the addresses of two referees and at least one recommendation letter. Applications should be registered directly on the SOLEIL internet website.