SAMCSS 2013-2017

A summer school on Monte Carlo radiation transfer and radiation hydrodynamics techniques will be held in St Andrews from 25th August until the evening of 29th August 2019. The number of places is limited with priority given to STFC-funded PhD students and postdocs. Students will be introduced to Monte Carlo radiation transfer techniques and numerical hydrodynamics codes, including fixed grid, moving mesh, and SPH. They will have the opportunity to write their own codes and learn how to use existing radiation transfer, hydrodynamics, and radiation-hydrodynamics codes. The MCRT techniques and codes are readily applicable to simulations for scattered light, dust and gas radiative equilibrium, photoionisation, and NLTE molecular line transfer. The combined rad-hydro codes are used for state of the art simulations exploring the effects of dynamical and radiation feedback in star forming regions, the interstellar medium of galaxies and the intergalactic medium.

Guest lecturers from medical physics will present applications of Monte Carlo techniques for light transport simulations in photo therapies. Several publicly available Monte Carlo and rad-hydro codes will be introduced in detail with the goal that by the end of the school the students will have a toolbox of codes that they can use in their own research projects. The programme will comprise short introductory lectures to each topic, followed by detailed descriptions of individual codes. Lots of time will be set aside for students to become familiar with using the codes and interacting with the lecturers who developed them. There will be special sessions on using MCRT codes to post-process numerical hydrodynamics simulations for modelling and interpreting high spatial resolution continuum and line observations from observatories such as ALMA, VLT/SPHERE, VLTI.

Preliminary schedule

A detailed preliminary schedule is now available. This schedule is still subject to small changes.

Registration

Registration for the summer school has now closed.

Costs

All expenses for STFC-funded PhD students and postdocs are covered by the STFC, including travel by rail to St Andrews from within the UK, five nights accommodation, delegate fees, and meals and events.

STFC funded participants wanting to claim back their travel expenses can fill out the STFC claim form, sign it, and then send a scan of the form and receipts to studentships@stfc.ukri.org.

Non-STFC participants will have to pay a registration fee of £700.

Note that we will take care of accommodation, meals and events for all participants, both STFC funded and non-STFC funded. Participants only need to book their travel to and from St Andrews.

Contact

Email Kenny Wood - kw25@st-andrews.ac.uk - with any questions or queries.

Previous schools

The links below will take you to the web pages for the previous Monte Carlo Summer Schools