The Solar Physics Group at Northumbria University is pleased to offer a fully funded 3 year PhD studentship funded by Northumbria University, beginning on 1 October 2014.
http://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=53687&LID=2317

Project Title: Physics of solar and stellar flares and its diagnostics from spectral observations
Principal Supervisor: Valentina Zharkova – Mathematics and Information Sciences

Solar flares are magnificent manifestations of abrupt explosions in the Sun affecting the whole solar atmosphere, interior and the interplanetary space. During these energetic events there is an abrupt and powerful conversion of magnetic energy into energy of large shocks, mass eruptions, energetic particles, strongly increased ultra-violet, X-ray, gamma-ray, optical and radio radiation. All these are emitted from the Sun into the interplanetary space affecting communications around the Earth, manned satellites and aircrafts, the Earth atmosphere (Aurora Borealis) bombarding its habitat and power stations if they are on a path of these eruptions. Similar flaring events but of larger scales much (up to 3 order of magnitude) are also observed from many stars indicating flaring processes to be wide spread in the Universe.
The PhD project will be a numerical investigation of high energy (hard X-ray, gamma-ray, radio) and optical emission produced during solar and stellar flares using kinetic and radiative transfer theories. Possible thesis topics will be the investigation of magnetic reconnection with kinetic methods as possible mechanism causing these abrupt explosions and energisation of the ambient plasma, investigation of non-thermal and thermal processes leading to the observed radiation from X-rays to optical emission, non-equilibrium radiative transfer for flaring plasmas comprising of hydrogen, helium and metals and developing diagnostics methods for detection of these processes from spectral observations in different electro-magnetic ranges originating from the whole atmosphere of a star from the corona to the photosphere.
The potential candidate will be skilled in numerical analysis and simulations, as well as have a background in physics and/or computational mathematics. The project will involve the analysis of numerical simulation results and their comparison with solar and stellar observations from satellites and ground-based telescopes.
Informal Enquiries: Enquiries regarding this studentship should be made to: valentina.zharkova at northumbria.ac.uk

Eligibility criteria: Applicants should hold a first or upper second class honours degree (in a relevant subject) from a British higher education institution, or equivalent. Students who are not UK/EU residents are eligible to apply, provided they hold the relevant academic qualifications, together with an IELTS score of at least 6.5.

To apply, e-mail ee.pgradministration@northumbria.ac.uk to request the appropriate application form, quoting the advert reference EE-53687.

Deadline for applications: 7 April 2014