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Student Assistant - Condensed Matter Physics

Brookhaven National Laboratory
$17.00 - $31.75 / hr
United States, New York, Upton
20 Brookhaven Ave (Show on map)
Jun 03, 2026

The Condensed Matter Physics Department is seeking a Part-Time - Student Assistant to work on the following project:

Tensor networks have emerged as a powerful tool to simulate quantum many-body systems in equilibrium at zero and finite temperature, but also for dynamical simulations of correlated quantum systems. The exponential thermal renormalization group (XTRG, Chen et al.,
PRX 2018) was introduced as a simple transparent approach for thermal simulations that traverses energy scales exponentially by doubling the Gibbs state with itself.

The project intends to explore a similar approach in the real-time domain. Benchmarks will be performed against Trotterization for short-ranged systems, but also for longer-range systems based on exact analytic solutions.

The employed toolbox is the open-source tensor library QSpace (v4) which is a highly optimized C++ library embedded into Matlab. With this, the coding can directly focus on the project within Matlab, yet with full access to physical symmetries for numerical efficiency. Hands-on familiarity with numerical quantum-many-body techniques and tensor network simulations is required, even if not with QSpace itself yet, thus likely requiring a senior graduate student.

The project duration is limited to 10 weeks starting mid June to align with summer interns at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for 2026.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • The candidate will familiarize themselves with tensor network setups within QSpace environment thorough understanding of XTRG (2018), to extend to real-time domain
  • Develop proof of principle demonstrations and benchmark against conventional approaches
  • Summarize results in paper

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

  • Active enrollment in an undergraduate or graduate level degree program in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Materials Science or related. The candidate may not exceed 1 semester past graduation from their program.
  • Hands-on experience on tensor network methods and algorithms
  • General overall understanding of quantum-many-body systems in lattice models
  • Significant computational experience

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

  • Matlab environment
  • HPC Cluster environment

Additional Information:

  • Brookhaven Laboratory is committed to providing fair, equitable and competitive compensation. The full salary range for this position is $17.00- $31.75/ hour. You will be placed at the level and salary commensurate with your experience and education. Salary offers will be commensurate with the final candidate's qualification, education and experience and considered with the internal peer group.
  • Estimated hours for this role will be 25 hours per week, subject to change based on the needs to the research and project.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is committed to employee success and we believe that a comprehensive employee benefits program is an important and meaningful part of the compensation employees receive. Review more information at BNL | Benefits Program

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About Us

Brookhaven National Laboratory (www.bnl.gov) delivers discovery science and transformative technology to power and secure the nation's future. Brookhaven Lab is a multidisciplinary laboratory with seven Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, 37 R&D 100 Awards, and more than 70 years of pioneering research. The Lab is primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA) operates and manages the Laboratory for DOE. BSA is a partnership between Battelle and The Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University. BSA salutes our veterans and active military members with careers that leverage the skills and unique experience they gained while serving our country, learn more at BNL | Opportunities for Veterans at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

Guided by our core values of integrity, responsibility, innovation, respect, and teamwork, Brookhaven Science Associates is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer-Vets/Disabled. We are committed to fostering a respectful and collaborative environment that fuels scientific discovery. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to any characteristic protected by law. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. We ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation. *VEVRAA Federal Contractor

BSA employees are subject to restrictions related to participation in Foreign Government Talent Recruitment Programs, as defined and detailed in United States Department of Energy Order 486.1A. You will be asked to disclose any such participation at the time of hire for review by Brookhaven. The full text of the Order may be found at:https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/400-series/0486.1-BOrder-a/@@images/file

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