particle physics phd

• Schools & departments

Particle Physics PhD

Awards: PhD

Study modes: Full-time

Funding opportunities

Programme website: Particle Physics

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Research profile

Exploring nature at the tiniest scale, the Particle Physics group seeks to add to our understanding of the make-up of our universe.

By joining our research group, you will be following in the footsteps of our celebrated emeritus professor, Peter Higgs, whose groundbreaking Higgs mechanism has excited the world of physics for decades and has been the focus of operations at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

You will also have the opportunity to confer and work with some of the greatest minds in physics today, through our links with leading conferences and international facilities.

Our research group works in two areas: Theory and Experiment.

Particle Physics – Theory

This research concerns fundamental physics at all energy scales, from hadronic binding energy to the massive forces at play in the first instants of the universe’s existence.

We collaborate with leading facilities, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the WMAP and Planck satellites.

Our current research explores developments in both perturbative and non-perturbative field theory, renormalization theory and the application of quantum theory to other branches of physics, such as turbulence theory and condensed matter systems.

Particle Physics – Experiment

We look to understand the fundamental particles of nature and the interactions that govern their behaviour.

In particular, from understanding the symmetries present in the universe, we seek to explain the dominance of matter over anti-matter, and mechanisms of symmetry-breaking that led to the creation of mass via the Higgs boson and non-Standard Model particles.

Researchers from our group are working on two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the LHCb experiment and the ATLAS experiment.

Training and support

In addition to research, our students attend a wide range of lectures and participate in international conferences.

Studentship opportunities

The Particle Physics group offers prospective PhD students exciting opportunities to study at the very frontier of understanding. Fully funded studentships are available for a wide range of theoretical and experimental projects, plus opportunities to travel to CERN for long and short visits.

Entry requirements

These entry requirements are for the 2024/25 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2025/26 academic year will be published on 1 Oct 2024.

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in physics.

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country
• English language requirements

Regardless of your nationality or country of residence, you must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 6.5 with at least 6.0 in each component. We do not accept IELTS One Skill Retake to meet our English language requirements.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 92 with at least 20 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced ( CAE ) / C2 Proficiency ( CPE ): total 176 with at least 169 in each component.
• Trinity ISE : ISE II with distinctions in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 62 with at least 59 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS , TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE , in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old* at the beginning of your programme of study. (*Revised 05 March 2024 to extend degree validity to five years.)

Find out more about our language requirements:

• Academic Technology Approval Scheme

If you are not an EU , EEA or Swiss national, you may need an Academic Technology Approval Scheme clearance certificate in order to study this programme.

Fees and costs

Tuition fees.

Scholarships and funding

Featured funding.

• Research Council Studentships
• Research scholarships for international students

UK government postgraduate loans

If you live in the UK, you may be able to apply for a postgraduate loan from one of the UK's governments.

The type and amount of financial support you are eligible for will depend on:

• your programme
• the duration of your studies
• your tuition fee status

Programmes studied on a part-time intermittent basis are not eligible.

• UK government and other external funding

Other funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding

Further information

• Graduate School Administrator
• Phone: +44 (0)131 650 5812
• Contact: [email protected]
• School of Physics & Astronomy
• James Clerk Maxwell Building
• Peter Guthrie Tait Road
• The King's Buildings Campus
• Programme: Particle Physics
• School: Physics & Astronomy
• College: Science & Engineering

Select your programme and preferred start date to begin your application.

PhD Physics - 3 Years (Full-time)

Application deadlines.

We encourage you to apply at least one month prior to entry so that we have enough time to process your application. If you are also applying for funding or will require a visa then we strongly recommend you apply as early as possible.

• How to apply

You must submit two references with your application.

Find out more about the general application process for postgraduate programmes:

DPhil in Particle Physics

• Entry requirements
• Funding and Costs

College preference

• How to Apply

About the course

The work of this world-class sub-department is in experimental particle physics, particle astrophysics and accelerator physics. Particle physics is the study of basic constituents of matter and their interactions. This is accomplished either directly with accelerators that create the particles under study or by observing high-energy particles from outer space.

The sub-department is one of the largest in the UK and is well equipped to carry out research in a wide range of topics, from the study of new particles produced at high energy accelerators to neutrinos, dark matter and dark energy in the Universe. The sub-department’s experiments are carried out at facilities around the world, in Switzerland, Japan, the USA and Canada.

You will spend half the first year on a lecture course in addition to starting your research and, if appropriate, spend your second year on-site at your experiment. Laboratories here in Oxford and experiments at overseas facilities provide access to a high-tech environment and excellent research training, directly applicable to a broad range of fields.

The world's biggest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, is running and in 2012 the Higgs boson, a particle thought to give mass to all elementary particles, was discovered. The understanding of its properties is one of the main aims of the ATLAS experiment. The Oxford group is also focused on the search of new particles predicted in Supersymmetry and others beyond the Standard Model theories. Elucidation of CP violation, one of the mysteries of particle physics, is the aim of the sub-department’s other LHC experiment, LHCb. Both experiments will require you to obtain and analyse data from the highest-energy machine in the world.

The sub-department is also involved in the study of neutrino oscillations and neutrino properties at the T2K experiment in Japan, MicroBooNe & DUNE in the USA, and at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO+) in Canada.

The sub-department has participated in direct searches for dark matter for many years and studentships are now available associated to the LZ project. Recently it has begun a programme in collaboration with the sub-department of astrophysics to elucidate the nature of dark energy with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) of the Vera C Rubin Observatory.

The future of particle physics relies on the development of new instruments for detecting particles and novel ideas in accelerator physics. The sub-department is heavily involved in the development of these areas. It has outstanding facilities to build the new silicon detectors needed for the luminosity upgrade of the LHC and other applications.

The sub-department is playing a major role in the ProtoDune experimental program at CERN, which is designed to test and validate the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber technologies for the construction of the DUNE Far Detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). 

Furthermore, through the John Adams Institute, students can engage in a range of projects on accelerators which would be used in high energy physics, nuclear physics, as X-ray sources, and in medical applications.

Supervision

The allocation of graduate supervision for this course is the responsibility of the Department of Physics and it is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. Under exceptional circumstances a supervisor may be found outside the Department of Physics.

You will be allocated at least one supervisor who should be your primary contact for guidance throughout your research degree. Research students join an existing research group which typically consists of academics, postdocs, fellows and current students. Students will meet with supervisors regularly. This could be in person, via email, or video conferencing.

All students will be initially admitted to the status of Probationer Research Student (PRS). Within a maximum of six terms as a PRS student and normally by the fourth term you will be expected to apply for transfer of status from Probationer Research Student to DPhil status.

A successful transfer of status from PRS to DPhil status will require satisfactory attendance and completion of problem sets during your first two terms, and submission of a report and thesis outline. Submission on a report and thesis outline. Students who are successful at transfer will also be expected to apply for and gain confirmation of DPhil status within nine terms of admission, to show that your work continues to be on track.

Both milestones normally involve an interview with two or more assessors other than your supervisor and therefore provide important experience for the final oral examination (ie the viva).

The actual DPhil viva requires you to submit a [substantial and original] thesis not exceeding 250 pages after three or at most four years from the date of admission. To be successfully awarded a DPhil in particle physics you will need to defend your thesis orally (viva voce) in front of two appointed examiners.

Graduate destinations

The particle physics doctoral programme at Oxford is ideally suited to students who would like to pursue a career in research, either in academia or industry all over the world.

Students have taken on a wide variety of jobs in other fields, including investment banking, business analysis, and consulting. Physics as a discipline is always in high demand.

Changes to this course and your supervision

The University will seek to deliver this course in accordance with the description set out in this course page. However, there may be situations in which it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, either before or after registration. The safety of students, staff and visitors is paramount and major changes to delivery or services may have to be made in circumstances of a pandemic, epidemic or local health emergency. In addition, in certain circumstances, for example due to visa difficulties or because the health needs of students cannot be met, it may be necessary to make adjustments to course requirements for international study.

Where possible your academic supervisor will not change for the duration of your course. However, it may be necessary to assign a new academic supervisor during the course of study or before registration for reasons which might include illness, sabbatical leave, parental leave or change in employment.

For further information please see our page on changes to courses and the provisions of the student contract regarding changes to courses.

Entry requirements for entry in 2024-25

Proven and potential academic excellence.

The requirements described below are specific to this course and apply only in the year of entry that is shown. You can use our interactive tool to help you  evaluate whether your application is likely to be competitive .

Please be aware that any studentships that are linked to this course may have different or additional requirements and you should read any studentship information carefully before applying. 

Degree-level qualifications

As a minimum, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve the following UK qualifications or their equivalent:

• a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours in physics, mathematics or related fields. The equivalent of a UK four-year integrated MPhys or MSci degree is typically required. Bachelor's degrees with a minimum four years' standard duration may satisfy the entry requirements.

Entrance is very competitive and most successful applicants have a first-class degree or the equivalent. In exceptional cases, the requirement for a first-class or strong upper-second class undergraduate degree with honours can be alternatively demonstrated by a graduate master’s degree or substantial directly-related professional or research experience.

For applicants with a degree from the USA, the typical minimum GPA sought is 3.3 out of 4.0. However, selection of candidates also depends on other factors in your application and most successful applicants have achieved higher GPA scores. 

If your degree is not from the UK or another country specified above, visit our International Qualifications page for guidance on the qualifications and grades that would usually be considered to meet the University’s minimum entry requirements.

GRE General Test scores

No Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or GMAT scores are sought.

Other qualifications, evidence of excellence and relevant experience

It is helpful to include details of any of the following applicable attributes, which may strengthen your application:

• Details of any publications. Many candidates with no peer-reviewed publications, however, receive offers each year. Research or professional experience in areas aligned with the proposed supervisors' research interests.
• Depending on the project, evidence of training in scientific computer programming or related numerical techniques.
• Previous experience in a scientific or technical research environment.

English language proficiency

This course requires proficiency in English at the University's  standard level . If your first language is not English, you may need to provide evidence that you meet this requirement. The minimum scores required to meet the University's standard level are detailed in the table below.

*Previously known as the Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English or Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) † Previously known as the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English or Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE)

Your test must have been taken no more than two years before the start date of your course. Our Application Guide provides further information about the English language test requirement .

Declaring extenuating circumstances

If your ability to meet the entry requirements has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (eg you were awarded an unclassified/ungraded degree) or any other exceptional personal circumstance (eg other illness or bereavement), please refer to the guidance on extenuating circumstances in the Application Guide for information about how to declare this so that your application can be considered appropriately.

You will need to register three referees who can give an informed view of your academic ability and suitability for the course. The  How to apply  section of this page provides details of the types of reference that are required in support of your application for this course and how these will be assessed.

Supporting documents

You will be required to supply supporting documents with your application. The  How to apply  section of this page provides details of the supporting documents that are required as part of your application for this course and how these will be assessed.

Performance at interview

Interviews are normally held as part of the admissions process.  

It is expected that interviews will take place in February. Interviews will normally take place in person or by video link. 

You will be asked questions that probe your current knowledge of Particle Physics/Accelerator Physics. You may also be asked about any projects, supervised or unsupervised, you have done in the course of your undergraduate study or vacation placements.

How your application is assessed

Your application will be assessed purely on your proven and potential academic excellence and other entry requirements described under that heading.

References  and  supporting documents  submitted as part of your application, and your performance at interview (if interviews are held) will be considered as part of the assessment process. Whether or not you have secured funding will not be taken into consideration when your application is assessed.

An overview of the shortlisting and selection process is provided below. Our ' After you apply ' pages provide  more information about how applications are assessed . 

Shortlisting and selection

Students are considered for shortlisting and selected for admission without regard to age, disability, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity, race (including colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins), religion or belief (including lack of belief), sex, sexual orientation, as well as other relevant circumstances including parental or caring responsibilities or social background. However, please note the following:

• socio-economic information may be taken into account in the selection of applicants and award of scholarships for courses that are part of  the University’s pilot selection procedure  and for  scholarships aimed at under-represented groups ;
• country of ordinary residence may be taken into account in the awarding of certain scholarships; and
• protected characteristics may be taken into account during shortlisting for interview or the award of scholarships where the University has approved a positive action case under the Equality Act 2010.

Processing your data for shortlisting and selection

Information about  processing special category data for the purposes of positive action  and  using your data to assess your eligibility for funding , can be found in our Postgraduate Applicant Privacy Policy.

Admissions panels and assessors

All recommendations to admit a student involve the judgement of at least two members of the academic staff with relevant experience and expertise, and must also be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies or Admissions Committee (or equivalent within the department).

Admissions panels or committees will always include at least one member of academic staff who has undertaken appropriate training.

Other factors governing whether places can be offered

The following factors will also govern whether candidates can be offered places:

• the ability of the University to provide the appropriate supervision for your studies, as outlined under the 'Supervision' heading in the  About  section of this page;
• the ability of the University to provide appropriate support for your studies (eg through the provision of facilities, resources, teaching and/or research opportunities); and
• minimum and maximum limits to the numbers of students who may be admitted to the University's taught and research programmes.

Offer conditions for successful applications

If you receive an offer of a place at Oxford, your offer will outline any conditions that you need to satisfy and any actions you need to take, together with any associated deadlines. These may include academic conditions, such as achieving a specific final grade in your current degree course. These conditions will usually depend on your individual academic circumstances and may vary between applicants. Our ' After you apply ' pages provide more information about offers and conditions . 

In addition to any academic conditions which are set, you will also be required to meet the following requirements:

Financial Declaration

If you are offered a place, you will be required to complete a  Financial Declaration  in order to meet your financial condition of admission.

Disclosure of criminal convictions

In accordance with the University’s obligations towards students and staff, we will ask you to declare any  relevant, unspent criminal convictions  before you can take up a place at Oxford.

Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS)

Some postgraduate research students in science, engineering and technology subjects will need an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) certificate prior to applying for a  Student visa (under the Student Route) . For some courses, the requirement to apply for an ATAS certificate may depend on your research area.

You will usually be allocated your own desk in a shared office or laboratory. As a DPhil student, you will be provided with appropriate computing support to conduct your research. You will be given accounts on central Linux and Windows servers and, once you arrive at Oxford, you will be able to select the machine and operating system which works the best in your research group. Additionally, if you are working on a computationally intensive project, you will have appropriate access to the departmental cluster computers and national facilities.

Depending on the project, you will often be able to spend significant amounts of time away at the experimental site for your research. A similar level of provision will be available at these sites.

You will be a member of a college which provide social facilities.

As a member of the University you will have access to the Radcliffe Science Library as well as to your college libraries. 

The six sub-departments at Oxford Physics are Astrophysics, Atomic and Laser Physics, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Particle Physics and Theoretical Physics. Each of these sub-departments is autonomous, although many of the research projects available are interdisciplinary.

All of the DPhil degrees at Oxford Physics are research-based courses that normally take three to four years of study. You will be expected to carry out your own research in areas drawn from the broad range of research across the department, and will be allocated at least one supervisor who will be your primary contact for guidance throughout your research degree. In parallel with your project, you will be expected to attend a taught course in the first year, comprising lectures, seminars and discussion classes at graduate level.

Whilst working on your research project you will engage in a thorough skills training programme which includes a range of workshops and seminars in transferable skills, generic research skills and specific research techniques. There are also numerous seminars and lectures held in the department by local and visiting physicists, and you will be provided with many opportunities to meet experts in various fields. There will also be opportunity for you to present your work at both formal and informal conferences, seminars and colloquia.

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The University expects to be able to offer over 1,000 full or partial graduate scholarships across the collegiate University in 2024-25. You will be automatically considered for the majority of Oxford scholarships , if you fulfil the eligibility criteria and submit your graduate application by the relevant December or January deadline. Most scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic merit and/or potential. 

For further details about searching for funding as a graduate student visit our dedicated Funding pages, which contain information about how to apply for Oxford scholarships requiring an additional application, details of external funding, loan schemes and other funding sources.

Please ensure that you visit individual college websites for details of any college-specific funding opportunities using the links provided on our college pages or below:

Please note that not all the colleges listed above may accept students on this course. For details of those which do, please refer to the College preference section of this page.

Further information about funding opportunities for this course can be found on the department's website.

Annual fees for entry in 2024-25

Further details about fee status eligibility can be found on the fee status webpage.

Information about course fees

Course fees are payable each year, for the duration of your fee liability (your fee liability is the length of time for which you are required to pay course fees). For courses lasting longer than one year, please be aware that fees will usually increase annually. For details, please see our guidance on changes to fees and charges .

Course fees cover your teaching as well as other academic services and facilities provided to support your studies. Unless specified in the additional information section below, course fees do not cover your accommodation, residential costs or other living costs. They also don’t cover any additional costs and charges that are outlined in the additional information below.

Continuation charges

Following the period of fee liability , you may also be required to pay a University continuation charge and a college continuation charge. The University and college continuation charges are shown on the Continuation charges page.

Where can I find further information about fees?

The Fees and Funding  section of this website provides further information about course fees , including information about fee status and eligibility  and your length of fee liability .

Additional information

There are no compulsory elements of this course that entail additional costs beyond fees (or, after fee liability ends, continuation charges) and living costs. However, please note that, depending on your choice of research topic and the research required to complete it, you may incur additional expenses, such as travel expenses, research expenses, and field trips. You will need to meet these additional costs, although you may be able to apply for small grants from your department and/or college to help you cover some of these expenses.

Living costs

In addition to your course fees, you will need to ensure that you have adequate funds to support your living costs for the duration of your course.

For the 2024-25 academic year, the range of likely living costs for full-time study is between c. £1,345 and £1,955 for each month spent in Oxford. Full information, including a breakdown of likely living costs in Oxford for items such as food, accommodation and study costs, is available on our living costs page. The current economic climate and high national rate of inflation make it very hard to estimate potential changes to the cost of living over the next few years. When planning your finances for any future years of study in Oxford beyond 2024-25, it is suggested that you allow for potential increases in living expenses of around 5% each year – although this rate may vary depending on the national economic situation. UK inflationary increases will be kept under review and this page updated.

Students enrolled on this course will belong to both a department/faculty and a college. Please note that ‘college’ and ‘colleges’ refers to all 43 of the University’s colleges, including those designated as societies and permanent private halls (PPHs). 

If you apply for a place on this course you will have the option to express a preference for one of the colleges listed below, or you can ask us to find a college for you. Before deciding, we suggest that you read our brief  introduction to the college system at Oxford  and our  advice about expressing a college preference . For some courses, the department may have provided some additional advice below to help you decide.

The following colleges accept students on the DPhil in Particle Physics:

• Balliol College
• Brasenose College
• Christ Church
• Corpus Christi College
• Exeter College
• Hertford College
• Jesus College
• Keble College
• Lady Margaret Hall
• Linacre College
• Lincoln College
• Magdalen College
• Mansfield College
• Merton College
• New College
• Oriel College
• Pembroke College
• The Queen's College
• St Anne's College
• St Catherine's College
• St Cross College
• St Edmund Hall
• St Hilda's College
• St John's College
• St Peter's College
• Somerville College
• Trinity College
• University College
• Wadham College
• Wolfson College
• Worcester College
• Wycliffe Hall

Before you apply

Our  guide to getting started  provides general advice on how to prepare for and start your application. You can use our interactive tool to help you  evaluate whether your application is likely to be competitive .

If it's important for you to have your application considered under a particular deadline – eg under a December or January deadline in order to be considered for Oxford scholarships – we recommend that you aim to complete and submit your application at least two weeks in advance . Check the deadlines on this page and the  information about deadlines and when to apply  in our Application Guide.

Application fee waivers

An application fee of £75 is payable per course application. Application fee waivers are available for the following applicants who meet the eligibility criteria:

• applicants from low-income countries;
• refugees and displaced persons; 
• UK applicants from low-income backgrounds; and 
• applicants who applied for our Graduate Access Programmes in the past two years and met the eligibility criteria.

You are encouraged to  check whether you're eligible for an application fee waiver  before you apply.

Readmission for current Oxford graduate taught students

If you're currently studying for an Oxford graduate taught course and apply to this course with no break in your studies, you may be eligible to apply to this course as a readmission applicant. The application fee will be waived for an eligible application of this type. Check whether you're eligible to apply for readmission .

Applying to more than one physics DPhil course

You can indicate whether your application should be considered for other physics DPhil courses by following the  instructions for stating the ‘Proposed field and title of research project' . If you decide to do this, you will only need to submit a single application and pay the application fee once.

Do I need to contact anyone before I apply?

You do not need to make contact with the department before you apply but you are encouraged to visit the relevant departmental webpages to read any further information about your chosen course.

If you have any queries about the course, you should contact the departmental representative (rather than individual academics) using the contact details provided on this page.

Research areas may overlap across the different physics DPhil courses. If you are in any doubt about which course(s) to apply to, you are advised to read each of the physics course pages carefully before starting an application. If you have any course-related questions, please refer to the 'Further information and enquiries' section on each page for the relevant contact details.

Completing your application

You should refer to the information below when completing the application form, paying attention to the specific requirements for the supporting documents . 

If any document does not meet the specification, including the stipulated word count, your application may be considered incomplete and not assessed by the academic department. Expand each section to show further details.

Proposed field and title of research project

You should use this field of the application form to indicate whether you would like your application to be considered for other physics DPhil courses. To do this, insert the relevant acronym from the list below for each additional course that you would like your application to be considered for:

• DPhil in Astrophysics : ASTRO
• DPhil in Atomic and Laser Physics : ALP
• DPhil in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics : AOPP
• DPhil in Condensed Matter Physics : CMP
• DPhil in Particle Physics : PP
• DPhil in Theoretical Physics : TP

Your application will be considered for each additional course that you indicate - you should not apply for these courses separately or pay an additional application fee. Please ensure that your research proposal (which you will be asked to upload in a later section of the application form) meets the assessment criteria described on each relevant course page.

If you would like your application to be considered for only this course, you do not need to enter an acronym from the list above.

Proposed supervisor

If known, under 'Proposed supervisor name' enter the name of the academic(s) who you would like to supervise your research. You can also enter the name of the experimental collaboration(s) in which you are interested, eg ATLAS, LZ, etc. Otherwise, leave this field blank.

Referees: Three overall, generally academic

Whilst you must register three referees, the department may start the assessment of your application if two of the three references are submitted by the course deadline and your application is otherwise complete. Please note that you may still be required to ensure your third referee supplies a reference for consideration.

Three academic references are usually required. However, if you have been out of education and in employment for a few years, you may arrange one professional and two academic references.

Your references will support intellectual ability, academic achievement, motivation, and your ability to work in a group.

Official transcript(s)

Your transcripts should give detailed information of the individual grades received in your university-level qualifications to date. You should only upload official documents issued by your institution and any transcript not in English should be accompanied by a certified translation.

More information about the transcript requirement is available in the Application Guide.

A CV/résumé is compulsory for all applications. Most applicants choose to submit a document of one to two pages highlighting their academic achievements, and research if you have undertaken any, and any relevant professional experience.

Research proposal: A maximum of 500 words

You do not need to provide a detailed research proposal; you should only give a brief indication of the area in which you wish to carry out research. This may be quite specific, but need not be if you have not yet decided on your preferred topic or area.

The proposal should be written in English.

If possible, please ensure that the word count is clearly displayed on the document.

This will be assessed for:

• your reasons for applying
• the coherence of the proposal
• the originality of the project
• evidence of motivation for and understanding of the proposed area of study
• the ability to present a reasoned case in English
• the feasibility of successfully completing the project in the time available
• commitment to the subject, beyond the requirements of the degree course
• preliminary knowledge of research techniques
• capacity for sustained and intense work
• reasoning ability
• ability to absorb new ideas, often presented abstractly, at a rapid pace.

Your proposal should focus on your research rather than personal achievements, interests and aspirations.

Start or continue your application

You can start or return to an application using the relevant link below. As you complete the form, please  refer to the requirements above  and  consult our Application Guide for advice . You'll find the answers to most common queries in our FAQs.

Application Guide   Apply

ADMISSION STATUS

Closed to applications for entry in 2024-25

Register to be notified via email when the next application cycle opens (for entry in 2025-26)

12:00 midday UK time on:

Friday 5 January 2024 Latest deadline for most Oxford scholarships

Friday 1 March 2024 Applications may remain open after this deadline if places are still available - see below

A later deadline shown under 'Admission status' If places are still available,  applications may be accepted after 1 March . The 'Admissions status' (above) will provide notice of any later deadline.

*Three-year average (applications for entry in 2021-22 to 2023-24)

Further information and enquiries

This course is offered by the Department of Physics

• Course page  on the department's website
• Academic and research staff
• Departmental research  and potential projects
• Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences
• Residence requirements for full-time courses
• Postgraduate applicant privacy policy

Course-related enquiries

Advice about contacting the department can be found in the How to apply section of this page

✉ [email protected] ☎ +44 (0)1865 273360

Application-process enquiries

See the application guide

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The eight toroid magnets can be seen surrounding the calorimeter that is later moved into the middle of the detector. This calorimeter will measure the energies of particles produced when protons collide in the centre of the detector.

• DPhil in Particle Physics
• Experiments in preparation
• John Adams Institute
• Particle Physics internships
• R&D projects
• Running experiments

A DPhil (PhD) in Particle Physics covers a wide range of topics from the study of new particles produced at high-energy accelerators to neutrinos, dark matter, and dark energy in the Universe and experiments are carried out at facilities around the world.

Oxford’s particle physics experimental group is one of the largest in the world; it includes 28 academics and almost 50 research and technical staff and we support more than 80 postgraduate research students. Our doctoral students have the opportunity to join world-class experimental physics research: our research portfolio includes ATLAS and LHCb at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN; the DUNE long-baseline neutrino experiment, MicroBooNE, and MAGIS-100 and the LZ dark matter direct detection experiment in the USA; T2K, Super-K and Hyper-K in Japan; the Mu3e experiments at PSI; the BES-III experiment in China; the Rubin-LSST programme in Chile, and the AION experiment in Oxford, and the SNO+ neutrino detector in Canada.  We play a leading role in exploiting existing facilities, and we have critical roles in the design and development of future experiments. We have superb in-house research facilities, and we host the John Adams Institute for accelerator physics research.

We run an open day for prospective graduate students in December – whether in-person or online – for entry the following year. It is an opportunity to meet supervisors as well as some of our postdocs and current graduate students.  We will reimburse reasonable expenses for travel within the UK. Please retain all receipts if you wish to make such an expense claim.

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The information you provide will only be used for this in person/online event. For additional information about our privacy practices, please see here .

Read comprehensive information on fees and funding for graduate students .  Please note that in order to be considered for any of the UKRI funding sources, you are required to submit your application before the earlier deadline of Friday 5th January 2024.

How to apply

All applications must be made through the central University of Oxford graduate admissions website where you will find information about applying to any of the six DPhil courses on offer at the Department of Physics.

It is important to note that you are not required to select a final project or supervisor at the point of application; while it is useful for us to know the broad areas you are interested in, we do not expect you to have made a final decision on your preferred projects and there will be opportunities to discuss your interests before offers are made.

If you would like to apply for more than one DPhil course, there is no need to complete a separate application for each or pay more than one application fee; please refer to the instructions for applying to related courses .

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Graduate School

General Information

Program offerings:, director of graduate studies:, graduate program administrator:.

Graduate study in the Department of Physics is strongly focused on research leading to the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. We welcome students from diverse backgrounds and strive to provide a sense of community and inclusiveness where students are enabled to achieve their full potential. The Physics Department maintains an active research program with equal emphasis on theoretical and experimental studies. Primary research areas are theoretical and experimental elementary particle physics, theoretical and experimental gravity and cosmology, experimental nuclear and atomic physics, mathematical physics, theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics, and theoretical and experimental biophysics.

Students are encouraged to involve themselves in research activities right from the beginning. Early research participation leads to a more mature appreciation of the formal aspects of graduate study and a mastery of the skills necessary to succeed in independent work. It also allows a closer association with faculty members and a more natural transition to independent research later on. While research for the doctoral dissertation is the most important component of the program, the Physics Department also offers intensive training on best practices for teaching and scholarly presentation of research results. Together, this comprehensive training is designed to prepare students well for careers in academia and research at government or industrial laboratories, as well a broad range of non-academic careers in the private sector. The average time to completion of the Ph.D. in the Department of Physics is 5.4 years.

Interdepartmental Research Opportunities Physics department faculty and graduate students are active in research collaborations with scientists in several other departments, including astrophysical sciences, plasma physics, chemical and electrical engineering, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and quantitative and computational biology, as well as the Institute for Advanced Study and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. With prior approval, students may conduct their research under the supervision of advisers from outside the physics department.

Additional departmental requirements

Applicants must indicate at least one choice from a menu of Department's current Areas of Research – see the Department of Physics website " Research " section for descriptions of the research areas and the current activities in each. The Statement of Purpose is a good opportunity to clarify research interests. The Department of Physics notes that it is not necessary to describe how an applicant developed an interest in Physics.  Applicants are typically best served by devoting the statement to a description of their research background and interests. However, applicants with unusual or compelling paths are welcome to describe their experiences.  In any case, the Statement of Purpose should focus on an applicant’s specific research interests at Princeton and any relevant research experience.

Program Offerings

Program offering: ph.d..

The Department of Physics divides the core curriculum into three groups.  During the first two years, students are required to take and pass (at least) one course in each group. Thus minimally, a student needs to pass three core courses. A passing grade is a B or higher. All students are required to complete the core curriculum by the end of the second year.  The core curriculum is grouped into three areas, which are outlined below:

Quantum Mechanics/Quantum Field Theory PHY 506 Quantum Mechanics PHY 509 Relativistic Quantum Theory I PHY 510 Relativistic Quantum Theory II PHY 529 Introduction to High Energy Physics

Condensed Matter/Biophysics/Atomic Physics PHY 525 Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics I PHY 526 Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics II PHY 551 Atomic Physics (not taught every year) PHY 561 & 562 Biophysics

General Relativity/High Energy Physics PHY 523 Introduction to General Relativity PHY 524 Advanced Topics in General Relativity PHY 529 Introduction to High Energy Physics

During the fall term of the first year, students generally take one core course to supplement their undergraduate physics background and prepare for the preliminary exam. Students are encouraged to take other more advanced courses to expand their knowledge in their chosen specialty. 

All students are required to take a dedicated course, PHY 502 Communicating Physics that is designed to strengthen the skills necessary to communicate effectively as a teacher and researcher in physics.

Additional pre-generals requirements

Adviser Selection The Department of Physics aims to engage graduate students in research as soon as they arrive.  Graduate students are required to settle on a thesis topic and secure a dissertation adviser by the end of the second year.

General exam

The preliminary examination, the experimental project and the required minimum number of core courses constitute the general examination. All sections of the general examination must be completed by the end of the second year.  

Students take the first section of the general examination, the preliminary examination, in January or May of the first year. The preliminary examination covers topics of electromagnetism, elementary quantum mechanics, mechanics, statistical physics and thermodynamics.

The second section of the general examination is the experimental project, which consists of a report and presentation on an experiment that the student has either performed or assisted others in performing, at Princeton. Students submit the report and complete the presentation in November of the second year.  

Qualifying for the M.A.

The Master of Arts (M.A.) degree is normally an incidental degree on the way to full Ph.D. candidacy and is earned after a student successfully completes all components of the general examination. It may also be awarded to students who, for various reasons, leave the Ph.D. program, provided that these requirements have been met.

While teaching is not a requirement, the Department offers graduate students the opportunity to teach at least one semester during their graduate tenure. A wide range of teaching opportunities are offered, from laboratory work to recitation sessions in core undergraduate and advanced graduate courses.

Post-Generals requirements

The Pre-Thesis Project The pre-thesis project is a research project in the student's area of interest, conducted under the supervision of a faculty adviser who is likely to become the Ph.D. adviser for the student.  The final product is a written report and an oral defense in the presence of a pre-thesis committee, which is strongly encouraged to comprise faculty who will also serve as the student’s Ph.D. committee. The report's length and format are typically comparable to a journal article. It is advisable to include an introduction aimed at physicists who are not expert in the field.

The goals of the pre-thesis projects are:

• to give the student a serious introduction to his or her final area of specialization
• to get the student involved with the faculty in the research group of interest
• to get the student known by the faculty in the research group of interest

In order to get a rapid start on their thesis research, students are expected to start actively working on their pre-thesis project as soon as possible. The evaluation by the pre-thesis adviser will be an essential part of the reenrollment process at the end of the third year. The pre-thesis defense should take place no later than the fall of the third year.

Dissertation and FPO

The Ph.D. is awarded once the dissertation is accepted and the final public oral (FPO) has been completed.

• James D. Olsen

Associate Chair

• Waseem S. Bakr
• Simone Giombi

Director of Graduate Studies

Director of undergraduate studies.

• Dmitry Abanin
• Michael Aizenman
• Robert H. Austin
• Bogdan A. Bernevig
• William Bialek
• Curtis G. Callan
• Cristiano Galbiati
• Thomas Gregor
• Frederick D. Haldane
• M. Zahid Hasan
• David A. Huse
• William C. Jones
• Igor R. Klebanov
• Mariangela Lisanti
• Daniel R. Marlow
• Peter D. Meyers
• Nai Phuan Ong
• Lyman A. Page
• Frans Pretorius
• Michael V. Romalis
• Shinsei Ryu
• Joshua W. Shaevitz
• Suzanne T. Staggs
• Paul J. Steinhardt
• Christopher G. Tully
• Herman L. Verlinde
• Ali Yazdani

Associate Professor

• Silviu S. Pufu

Assistant Professor

• Lawrence W. Cheuk
• Andrew M. Leifer
• Isobel R. Ojalvo

Associated Faculty

• Ravindra N. Bhatt, Electrical & Comp Engineering
• Roberto Car, Chemistry
• Mihalis Dafermos, Mathematics
• Andrew A. Houck, Electrical & Comp Engineering
• Mansour Shayegan, Electrical & Comp Engineering
• David N. Spergel, Astrophysical Sciences
• David W. Tank, Princeton Neuroscience Inst
• Jeffrey D. Thompson, Electrical & Comp Engineering
• Salvatore Torquato, Chemistry
• Ned S. Wingreen, Molecular Biology
• Nathalie P. de Leon, Electrical & Comp Engineering

Senior Lecturer

• Grace Bosse
• Katerina Visnjic
• Steven J. Benton
• Vir B. Bulchandani
• Justin G. DeZoort
• Aurelien A. Fraisse
• Norman C. Jarosik
• Katharine Moran
• Matteo Parisi
• Jason L. Puchalla
• Claudio Savarese

Visiting Professor

• Nissan Itzhaki

Visiting Lecturer with Rank of Professor

• Stephen L. Adler
• Nima Arkani-Hamed
• Juan M. Maldacena
• Nathan Seiberg

For a full list of faculty members and fellows please visit the department or program website.

Permanent Courses

Courses listed below are graduate-level courses that have been approved by the program’s faculty as well as the Curriculum Subcommittee of the Faculty Committee on the Graduate School as permanent course offerings. Permanent courses may be offered by the department or program on an ongoing basis, depending on curricular needs, scheduling requirements, and student interest. Not listed below are undergraduate courses and one-time-only graduate courses, which may be found for a specific term through the Registrar’s website. Also not listed are graduate-level independent reading and research courses, which may be approved by the Graduate School for individual students.

CHM 510 - Topics in Physical Chemistry (also PHY 544)

Ece 560 - fundamentals of nanophotonics (also mse 556/phy 565), ece 567 - advanced solid-state electron physics (also phy 567), ece 569 - quantum information and entanglement (also phy 568), mat 595 - topics in mathematical physics (also phy 508), mse 504 - monte carlo and molecular dynamics simulation in statistical physics & materials science (also cbe 520/chm 560/phy 512), phy 502 - communicating physics (half-term), phy 505 - quantum mechanics, phy 506 - advanced quantum mechanics (also mse 576), phy 509 - quantum field theory, phy 510 - advanced quantum field theory, phy 511 - statistical mechanics, phy 521 - introduction to mathematical physics (also mat 597), phy 523 - introduction to relativity, phy 525 - introduction to condensed matter physics, phy 529 - high-energy physics, phy 536 - advanced condensed matter physics ii (also mse 577), phy 537 - nuclear physics, phy 539 - topics in high-energy physics, phy 540 - selected topics in theoretical high-energy physics, phy 557 - electronic methods in experimental physics, phy 558 - electronic methods in experimental physics ii, phy 561 - biophysics, phy 562 - biophysics, phy 563 - physics of the universe, phy 580 - extramural summer research project, phy 581 - graduate research internship, qcb 505 - topics in biophysics and quantitative biology (also phy 555), qcb 515 - method and logic in quantitative biology (also chm 517/eeb 517/mol 515/phy 570).

Particle Physics

Broadly defined, particle physics aims to answer the fundamental questions of the nature of mass, energy, and matter, and their relations to the cosmological history of the Universe.

As the recent discoveries of the Higgs Boson, neutrino oscillations, as well as direct evidence of cosmic inflation have shown, there is great excitement and anticipation about the next round of compelling questions about the origin of particle masses, the nature of dark matter, and the role leptons, and in particular neutrinos, may play in the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe.

The energy scales relevant for these questions range from the TeV to perhaps the Planck scale. Experimental exploration of these questions requires advances in accelerator and detector technologies to unprecedented energy reach as well as sensitivity and precision. New facilities coming online in the next decade promise to open new horizons and revolutionize our view of the particle world. 

Particle theory addresses a host of fundamental questions about particles, symmetries and spacetime. As experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) directly probe the TeV energy scale, questions about the origin of the weak scale and of particle masses become paramount. Is this physics related to new strong forces of nature, to new underlying symmetries that relate particles of different spin, or to additional spatial dimensions that have so far remained hidden? Will this physics include the particles that constitute the dark matter of the universe, and will measurements at the LHC allow a prediction of the observed cosmological abundance? String theory remains the leading candidate for a quantum theory of gravity, but a crucial debate has emerged as to whether its predictions are unique, or whether our universe is part of a multiverse. All of these fundamental questions about particles and spacetime lead to corresponding questions about the early history of the universe at ever higher temperatures. The most compelling links between cosmological observations and fundamental theory involve dark matter, inflation, the cosmological baryon excess and dark energy.

Mina Aganagic

Korkut bardakci, raphael bousso, william frazer, mary k. gaillard, lawrence hall, wick haxton, petr horava, hitoshi murayama, yasunori nomura, geoff penington, benjamin safdi, charles schwartz, mahiko suzuki, raúl briceño, luca victor iliesiu, experimentalists, dmitry budker, gabriel orebi gann, heather gray, barbara jacak, bob jacobsen, yury kolomensky, kam-biu luk, daniel mckinsey, marjorie shapiro, james siegrist, herbert steiner, haichen wang, michael s. witherell, chiara salemi.

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Open Research Opportunities for 2025 onward

The PhD supervisors and projects for fully funded studentships beginning in October 2025 will be listed here in due course.

See  here for information on how to apply. Please indicate interest in physics in the application materials if the projects listed in this section are your main interest. We also consider applications to the particle theory division of the Mathematics department, under the rubric of the Centre for Particle Theory.

Ongoing Postgraduate Research in the 2024 Cohort

Neutrino physics.

The PGR Student has been selected and will join the IPPP in October 2024.

Supervisor:  Jessica Turner

Precision calculations for present and future colliders

After the successful completion of Run I and II of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the much anticipated discovery of signals of beyond-the-Standard-Model physics is still lacking. Precision tests scrutinising the Standard Model are of prime importance in its physics programme, now and in the foreseeable future. At the same time new physics searches are looking for increasingly small signals demanding more precise estimates of the Standard Model backgrounds. Run III, having commenced recently, and the High-Luminosity upgrade thereafter, will further increase the available luminosity, enlarging the statistical prowess of the recorded data in most physics regions of interest. This expansion of sensitivity in both precision measurements and new physics searches in the multi-TeV region necessitates an immense improvement of the accuracy of theoretical predictions. Further, strongly interacting new physics signals have been largely excluded by now, putting an emphasis on weakly interacting models and their electroweak Standard Model backgrounds. This is not only true for ongoing precision LHC measurements, but all the more so for all proposed future e+e− colliders. Lacking the vast energy range of a hadron collider they focus, in one form or another, on measurements with unprecedented precision to probe the Standard Model and, possibly, expose any deviations from its predictions. The research performed in this PhD aims to provide precision calculations for relevant processes and observables at the LHC and future colliders that are necessary to contrast and test the predictions of our current best theory, the Standard Model, against the expected high-precision experimental data. In consequence, contribution from new physics not contained in the Standard Model to such processes and observables can be analysed and interpreted either as discoveries or more and more stringent exclusion limits. 

Supervisor:  Marek Schoenherr

Theories to enable searches for new physics with high energy and high precision experiments

The research performed in this PhD position seeks to deepen our understanding of the fundamental theories that describe our universe. Theories addressing the open problems not explained within the Standard Model of particle physics, for example the question what constitutes dark matter, how neutrinos obtain their masses, or whether new physics can explain the difference between the matter and antimatter we observe in the Universe, or how we can observe the cosmic neutrino background, have direct and indirect effects. In parallel novel experimental technologies have changed the way we can discover new physics significantly.  We now have high-statistics available to probe the properties of the Higgs boson, gravitational wave detectors have enabled to search for completely new signals, and quantum sensors have made enormous progress in the last decade. The goal of this research is to consistently describe theories of new physics taking into account all effects dictated by the mathematical consistency and the symmetries of the theory, to explore the implications of this description and to advise novel ways top observe these direct and indirect effects. Special focus will be on fully exploiting the experimental advances both in high-energy physics and high-precision physics. Familiarity with both quantum field theory calculations and scientific software are beneficial for this project.

Supervisor:  Martin Bauer

Unveiling the Neutrino Mysteries: From Particle Physics to Astrophysics

As part of the project, we will explore neutrino properties in light of the newly discovered sources by the IceCube (pictured above) and KM3net experiments. We will also investigate the 3-neutrino paradigm through upcoming measurements by the Dune, Juno, and HyperK experiments.

PGR student: Joseph Tudor (starts October 2024)

Supervisor:  Ivan Martinez-Soler

Phenomenology at Particle Colliders and Simulations

High-energy collisions at particle accelerators continue to provide us with the best and most varied data and insights concerning the fundamental constituents of matter and the rules according to which they interact. After the discovery of the Higgs boson a decade ago, the current flag-ship experiments at the CERN LHC are entering a phase where their ever increasing precision is cornering and excluding ideas for extensions of the Standard Model. At the same time, the particle community is discussing the experiments after the LHC era, with a wide array of options and a broad range of physics opportunities.

For all these facilities at current and future particle colliders simulations bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and experimental data, turning the former into calculations and results that can be directly compared with the latter. Consequently, simulation tools such as SHERPA event generator are a unique and non-dispensable part of all phenomenological efforts to shed light on the behaviour of matter at its most fundamental level.

Frank’s PhD project will center around extending the capabilities of SHERPA with the latest theoretical results and methods and using the event generator to propose new measurements to the experimental community.

Supervisor:  Frank Krauss

Shedding light on dark matter with new phenomenological tools and astrophysical data

H The particle nature of dark matter, constituting greater than 80% of the matter content of the Universe, continues to elude us. Recent breakthroughs in astronomy may hold the potential to unravel this mystery, as they allow access to previously concealed regimes of the cosmos. 

In particular, wo novel types of astrophysical data may lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of dark matter. Firstly, there is the advent of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy, marked by the detection of a binary black hole merger by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration in 2015. In 2023, pulsar timing arrays also reported a signal consistent with nanoHz gravitational waves. Future observation runs and future GW experiments will advance significantly in frequency range and sensitivity, opening up new directions for phenomenological studies of particle physics. Secondly, infrared (IR) astronomy is poised to revolutionise our understanding of the cosmos. With the launch of next-generation space telescopes including JWST and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), and the refinement of ground-based observatories, we will be able to probe deeper into the universe than ever before, capturing images and spectra of celestial objects that remain elusive in other wavelengths. 

In this PhD project you will work on phenomenology of dark matter through the interpretation of astrophysical data, paving the way to answer fundamental questions about the nature of dark matter. You will work with a sophisticated arsenal of tools, which will likely include stellar evolution simulations and various data analysis and machine learning techniques, and collaborate with experts across different fields. 

Supervisor:  Djuna Croon

© Copyright 1999 IPPP, Durham University

Graduate Program

Excellence in graduate education.

Our department’s faculty and students are published and featured in numerous publications, hold high-level positions at major experiments around the world, and over half are Fellows of the American Physical Society.

Our research specialties include experimental particle physics, particle astrophysics, theoretical particle physics and cosmology, molecular biophysics, experimental biophysics, experimental condensed matter physics, theoretical quantum condensed matter physics, statistical physics, polymer physics and computational physics. There are numerous interdisciplinary opportunities, particularly with the School of Engineering and the Center for Photonics Research. Major resources include the Scientific Instrument Facility, the Electronics Design Facility, and the supercomputer clusters in the Center for Computational Science.

We have over 70 graduate students, with a typical incoming class of 10 to 20 students. The department provides full tuition scholarships, stipends, and student medical insurance for essentially all graduate students through a combination of teaching fellowships, research assistantships, and university fellowships.

The Physics Department is centrally located on Boston University’s main Charles River Campus. Boston is a major metropolitan center of cultural, scholarly, scientific and technological activity. There are many major academic institutions in the area, providing students an array of opportunities with which to supplement their education at BU.

PhD in Physics

Program requirements and policies.

• Graduate TA should register on SIS for PHY 405; Graduate RA should register on SIS for PHY 406 .
• Students who are working on a thesis or dissertation project for their doctoral degree should also register for PHY 502 FT (Doctoral Degree Continuation) in each semester.

I. Proficiency in four core fields

• Classical mechanics
• Classical electromagnetism
• Statistical mechanics
• Quantum mechanics

Students can demonstrate proficiency through:

• PHY 131: Advanced Classical Mechanics
• PHY 145: Classical Electromagnetic Theory I
• PHY 146: Classical Electromagnetic Theory II
• PHY 153: Statistical Mechanics
• PHY 163: Quantum Theory I
• PHY 164: Quantum Theory II
• A final grade of A- or better in PHY 131: Advanced Classical Mechanics meets the proficiency requirement for classical mechanics.
• An average combined final grade of A- or better in PHY 145: Classical Electromagnetic Theory I and PHY 146: Classical Electromagnetic Theory II meets the proficiency requirement for classical electromagnetism.
• A final grade of A- or better in PHY 153: Statistical Mechanics meets the proficiency requirement for statistical mechanics.
• An average combined final grade of A- or better in PHY 163: Quantum Theory I and PHY 146: Quantum Theory II meets the proficiency requirement for quantum mechanics.
• Passing a written qualifying exam in the subject(s).

Assessment policy for proficiency in the core courses for first year students

II. At least one course from any two of the following specialized fields

• AST 121: Galactic Astronomy
• AST 122: Extragalactic Astronomy
• Any graduate level courses, including Special Topics courses, in Astronomy/Astrophysics
• PHY 173: Solid State Physics I
• PHY 174: Solid State Physics II
• Any graduate level courses, including Special Topics courses, in Condensed Matter Physics
• PHY 183: Particle Physics I
• PHY 184: Particle Physics II
• Any graduate level courses, including Special Topics courses, in Particle Physics
• PHY 167: General Relativity
• PHY 268: Cosmology
• Any graduate level courses, including Special Topics courses, in General Relativity and Cosmology
• PHY 263: Advanced Quantum Mechanics
• Any graduate level courses, including Special Topics courses, in Quantum Mechanics or Quantum Information

III. Oral qualifying examination

By the end of the third year, the student must complete an oral qualifying examination in his/her chosen specialized field. The purpose of the oral qualifying examination is threefold:

• to provide the student with an opportunity to apply his/her fundamental knowledge of physics to a specific topic in his/her field of interest;
• to evaluate the student's ability to carry that skill forward into his/her dissertation research, and
• to provide practice in the presentation of scientific material.

The topic should be selected by the student in consultation with his/her research advisor, in order best to advance that student's progress. It could be a review of research relevant to the student's intended research project, a proposal for a possible research topic, or another topic in the general area of the student's research, but not directly related to that research. It should be sufficiently well defined that the student can achieve substantial mastery and depth of understanding in a period of 4-6 weeks. In general, depth is more important than breadth.

The student shall prepare and deliver a public presentation of 30-45 minutes duration, with the expectation that during that period the audience and guidance committee will freely ask questions. The form of the presentation will be determined by the student's advisor and guidance committee, but regardless of the format, the student must be prepared to depart from the prepared material to answer questions.

Following the presentation and an open question period, the audience will be asked to leave, and the student's guidance committee will pose additional questions. While some questions will be directly related to the topic of the presentation, others will probe fundamental physics underlying or related to the topic. The student's ability to respond appropriately, exhibiting both understanding of the relevant physics and the ability to apply it to the topic at hand, is at least as important as the prepared presentation.

While the primary function of the examination is educational rather than evaluative, if the guidance committee does not find the student's performance to be satisfactory, it may:

• Fail the student, resulting in his/her administrative withdrawal from the doctoral program;
• Require the student to submit to another oral examination covering the same or different material;
• Require other remedial work, which may include preparing and presenting a written or oral explanation of some topic, or such other steps as the committee deems appropriate.

In cases (2) and (3), the requirement must be completed successfully within two months after the original examination, but no later than the beginning of the student's fourth year. In no case will the student receive a third opportunity to fulfill the requirement.

IV. Independent research

After satisfactory performance on the oral qualifying exam, the candidate undertakes a program of independent research under the guidance of their research advisor, culminating in the preparation and defense of a doctoral dissertation. Students must register for one credit of PHY 0297: Graduate Research and one credit of PHY 0298: Graduate Research in their final two semesters of the program.

Alternatively, use our A–Z index

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PhD Particle Physics / Programme details

Year of entry: 2024

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Programme description

The Department has a strong presence in a number of Manchester-based centres for multidisciplinary research: The National Graphene Institute, the Photon Science Institute, the Manchester Centre for Non-Linear Dynamics, and the Dalton Nuclear Institute. In addition, the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire is a part of the department.

The Manchester Particle Physics group performs theoretical and experimental research into the fundamental constituents of matter and the interactions that govern them. The group includes over 50 academic, research, and technical staff and over 50 postgraduate research students, making it one of the largest groups in the country.

Opportunities exist for prospective postgraduates to directly contribute to the world-class experimental and theoretical particle physics research conducted by our group members, including projects that span experiment and theory. Our theoretical research spans the development of models of Beyond the Standard Model physics and their testing at existing and future experimental facilities, connections to the study of particle cosmology and the early Universe, and research into high-precision quantum chromodynamics calculations and Monte Carlo modelling.

Our experimental research spans the LHCb, ATLAS and FASER experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the DUNE experiment and short-baseline neutrino experiment programme at Fermilab in the USA, the NEXT experiment in Spain, the Mu2e and g-2 experiments at Fermilab, the SuperNEMO experiment on the French/Italian border, the BES-III experiment in China, and the Darkside-50/20k dark matter direct detection experiments in Italy.

The group holds leadership responsibilities in 14 international experiments, and hosts the spokesperson of one major international collaboration. As well as playing a leading role in the exploitation of existing facilities, the group has key roles in the design and development of future experiments including FCC, Liquid Argon TPC detector development, particle tracking detector upgrades for the LHCb and ATLAS experiments, and 3D diamond detector technologies.

The group has strong links with national and international facilities, a very well-equipped laboratory space and state-of-the-art clean rooms, and hosts one of the largest and most successful Tier-2 distributed computing centres in the UK. We have a local computing cluster with networked storage and GPUs.

For more information about research themes within the department please visit our themes page or view available projects within the department on our Postgraduate Research projects page .

Additional programme information

Equality, diversity and inclusion is fundamental to the success of The University of Manchester, and is at the heart of all of our activities.

We know that diversity strengthens our research community, leading to enhanced research creativity, productivity and quality, and societal and economic impact.

We actively encourage applicants from diverse career paths and backgrounds and from all sections of the community, regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation and transgender status.

We also support applications from those returning from a career break or other roles.

We consider offering flexible study arrangements (including part-time: 50%, 60% or 80%, depending on the project/funder), carer support funds for conferences, and peer support networks for parents and carers.

All appointments are made on merit.  The University of Manchester and our external partners are fully committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Related research

Related research in the Department is conducted through the following research groupings:

Nuclear Physics.

Particle Accelerator Physics.

Theoretical Physics.

For more information on the above research groupings please visit www.physics.manchester.ac.uk

Scholarships and bursaries

In the Department of Physics and Astronomy we offer a range of scholarships, studentships and awards to support UK and overseas postgraduate researchers.

Funding is also available at university and faculty level and can be viewed on our funding page . Alternatively, you can use our funding database to find scholarships, studentships and awards you may be eligible for.

We'd recommend you discuss potential sources of funding with your supervisor before applying. They can advise what funding may be available to you, and ensure you meet nomination and application deadlines.

Disability support

We have a PhD position available for a home (UK) student to work on the ATLAS experiment, starting in the 2023-24 academic year. Please contact Dr Miriam Watson by email if you are interested in applying. --> Each year we have several research-council funded places, and a limited number of University Scholarships for home students (UK nationals and EU nationals with (pre-)settled status). International students are welcome to apply. Please make contact to investigate alternative funding possibilities. Please see information below, and instructions on how to apply. For more information please contact the PhD admission tutor: Email: M.F.Watson_AT_bham.ac.uk Postal: School of Physics and Astronomy The University of Birmingham Edgbaston BIRMINGHAM B15 2TT Experimental High Energy Physics in Birmingham There could hardly be a better time than the present to begin a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham! We play central roles in cutting-edge experiments, present and future, addressing a broad range of issues in modern particle physics. We are heavily involved in data analysis at the ATLAS experiment, and members of the group have played major roles in the discovery of the new particle consistent with the Higgs boson. Besides, our ATLAS group works on heavy quarks physics (beauty and top). Our LHCb group studies rare decays of particles containing the beauty quark, and the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. We also study CP violation and matter-antimatter asymmetry at LHCb. Beside LHC experiments, we are searching for new physics in very rare strange particle decays and for processes that violate Lepton Flavour Universality through our work on the CERN fixed target NA62 experiment. DUNE experiment that plans to study neutrino oscillations. --> The group also has growing activities on novel detectors for light dark matter searches at the NEWS-G experiment and elsewhere. Looking at a more distant future, we are heavily involved in LHC upgrades and in work towards future electron-proton, electron-ion colliders (LHeC, EIC), electron-positron colliders (ILC, CLIC, FCC-ee), and proton-proton colliders (FCC-hh). The group also has a strong R&D programme on silicon detectors for the LHC Upgrade and beyond, and for Medical Physics applications. We accept excellent students to work for a PhD on all our research projects. Doing a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics at Birmingham University We have a large particle physics group , with currently around 40 academic and support staff members and 25 PhD students, and extensive local facilities . The particle physics group is housed in recently renovated offices with excellent computing facilities, near to the centre of the University campus. Students work closely with their supervisors, but also with other academic and research staff, participating fully in the life of the group. In addition to the research work on their selected experiment, students spend part of their first year on a taught graduate course, including lectures on particle physics theory and experimentation. The course culminates in the Rutherford Laboratory Summer School on Particle Physics held at the end of the first year. As part of their training, students also usually attend a CERN or other major international Summer School relevant to their research at the end of their second year. The remainder of the course is focussed full-time on research. This usually involves a mixture of detector development or operation and analysis of experimental data, the exact mix depending on the experiment and the student's interests. Students usually spend significant time on site at their experiment, for example at CERN (Geneva), working closely with our international colleagues. This may be in the form of a long-term attachment of perhaps a year, or else several short visits, depending on the project and the student. The extensive analytical, scientific, computing, presentational and team-working skills obtained by particle physics PhD students provides a solid foundation for post-doctoral employment, either in research, industry, or business.   --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> Searching for new physics in proton-proton collisions at the LHC Searching for new physics in ultra-rare kaon decays Searching for new physics in rare B decays Deep-underground neutrino experiment Calorimetry research and development for a future e+e- collider Proton structure and QCD in deep inelastic electron proton scattering Colliding heavy ions at the LHC to investigate the quark-gluon plasma Accelerator research and development for a future e+e- collider Study at Cambridge About the university, research at cambridge. 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International events International student views overview Akhila’s story Alex’s story Huijie’s story Kelsey’s story Nilesh’s story Get in touch! Events overview Upcoming events Postgraduate Open Days overview Discover Cambridge: Master’s and PhD Study webinars Virtual tour Research Internships How we use participant data Postgraduate Newsletter PhD in Physics Primary tabs. Overview (active tab) Requirements How To Apply The PhD in Physics is a full-time period of research which introduces or builds upon, research skills and specialist knowledge. Students are assigned a research supervisor, a specialist in part or all of the student's chosen research field, and join a research group which might vary in size between a handful to many tens of individuals. Although the supervisor is responsible for the progress of a student's research programme, the extent to which a postgraduate student is assisted by the supervisor or by other members of the group depends almost entirely on the structure and character of the group concerned. The research field is normally determined at entry, after consideration of the student's interests and the facilities available. The student, however, may work within a given field for a period of time before their personal topic is determined. There is no requirement made by the University for postgraduate students to attend formal courses or lectures for the PhD. Postgraduate work is largely a matter of independent research and successful postgraduates require a high degree of self-motivation. Nevertheless, lectures and classes may be arranged, and students are expected to attend both seminars (delivered regularly by members of the University and by visiting scholars and industrialists) and external conferences. Postgraduate students are also expected to participate in the undergraduate teaching programme at some time whilst they are based at the Cavendish, in order to develop their teaching, demonstrating, outreach, organisational and person-management skills. It is expected that postgraduate students will also take advantage of the multiple opportunities available for transferable skills training within the University during their period of research. Learning Outcomes By the end of the research programme, students will have demonstrated: the creation and interpretation of new knowledge, through original research or other advanced scholarship, of a quality to satisfy peer review, extend the forefront of the discipline, and merit publication; a systematic acquisition and understanding of a substantial body of knowledge which is at the forefront of an academic discipline or area of professional practice; the general ability to conceptualise, design and implement a project for the generation of new knowledge, applications or understanding at the forefront of the discipline, and to adjust the project design in the light of unforeseen problems; a detailed understanding of applicable techniques for research and advanced academic enquiry; and the development of a PhD thesis for examination that they can defend in an oral examination and, if successful, graduate with a PhD. The Postgraduate Virtual Open Day usually takes place at the end of October. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions to admissions staff and academics, explore the Colleges virtually, and to find out more about courses, the application process and funding opportunities. Visit the  Postgraduate Open Day  page for more details. See further the  Postgraduate Admissions Events  pages for other events relating to Postgraduate study, including study fairs, visits and international events. Key Information 3-4 years full-time, 4-7 years part-time, study mode : research, doctor of philosophy, department of physics, course - related enquiries, application - related enquiries, course on department website, dates and deadlines:, lent 2024 (closed). Some courses can close early. See the Deadlines page for guidance on when to apply. Easter 2024 (Closed) Michaelmas 2024 (closed), easter 2025, funding deadlines. These deadlines apply to applications for courses starting in Michaelmas 2024, Lent 2025 and Easter 2025. Similar Courses Physics MPhil Planetary Science and Life in the Universe MPhil Mathematics MPhil Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics PhD Astronomy MPhil Postgraduate Admissions Office Admissions Statistics Start an Application Applicant Self-Service At a glance Bringing a family Current Postgraduates Cambridge Students' Union (SU) University Policy and Guidelines Privacy Policy Information compliance Equality and Diversity Terms of Study About this site About our website Privacy policy © 2024 University of Cambridge Contact the University Accessibility Freedom of information Privacy policy and cookies Statement on Modern Slavery University A-Z Undergraduate Postgraduate Research news About research at Cambridge Spotlight on... Doctoral Programme in Particle Physics and Universe Sciences The activities of the doctoral programme are concentrated at the Division of Particle Physics and Astrophysics within the department of Physics. Students carry out their research projects in the Department of Physics and many other institutes, e.g. Helsinki Insitute of Physics, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Finnish Geodetic Institute. Want to know more? Visit our profile & activities page to learn more about the programme. Schools & departments Astronomy & Astrophysics Condensed Matter & Complex Systems Particle Physics Experiment Particle Physics Theory Nuclear Physics Physics & Astronomy Study with us Postgraduate research study PhD research opportunities PhD projects in Particle Physics Theory About particle physics theory. The research group in Particle Physics Theory at the University of Edinburgh is one of the largest in the UK. We have a large group of PhD students from around the world: recent examples include students from Ireland, Germany, Italy, the United States, as well as the UK. We are always interested in good students who would like to join us and begin studying for a PhD. Find out more about Particle Physics Theory PhD students in the Particle Physics Theory group may choose to explore all the group's research interests in their first few months. After this time, they begin work on a research project which is mutually agreed with a staff member. So, broadly speaking, we offer PhD projects in all of our areas of research interest: Collider physics Flavour physics Fundamental theory Particle cosmology We also have more specific PhD projects which you can explore below. Available PhD projects A list of current PhD projects in Particle Physics Theory is shown below. Click on each project to find out more about the project, its supervisor(s) and its research area(s). Bootstrap Methods for Standard Model Processes Data science Dissecting the cosmic web with caustics General properties of gauge-theory scattering amplitudes Generative AI for lattice field theory High Energy Jets Lattice QCD and precision tests of the Standard Model Multi-loop scattering amplitudes and fundamental physics experiments Parton Distribution Functions Physics at the LHC: Experiment and Theory QED correction to rare and semileptonic B/D decays Quantum entanglement in the early universe Strong external fields and non-perturbative physics Department of Physics Particle physics, experimental. The experimental  High Energy Physics group  is active in a range of experiments studying the fundamental constituents of matter. The work includes accelerator-based experiments, studies using nuclear reactors, and the detection of new particles from astrophysical sources. This research takes place within the  Enrico Fermi Institute  and in many cases is joint with faculty in other departments. Faculty also work in close collaboration with researchers at  CERN , the  Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  and  Argonne National Laboratory . The University of Chicago manages the latter two laboratories for the Department of Energy. Current research in high-energy physics includes studies of p-p interactions using the LHC at CERN; searches for weakly interacting and/or long-lived particles at dedicated experiments near accelerators like the LHC; development of new technologies, sensor concepts, collider facilities, and accelerator concepts for future high-energy experiments; searches for supersymmetric particles, dark sectors, and other unobserved forms of matter; precision tests of electroweak theory through measurements of the properties of the top quark and the W and Z bosons; searches for dark matter, both in collider experiments and from astrophysical sources; study of neutrino oscillations; studies of the highest energy cosmic rays; high-precision measurement of CP violation in K decays and high-sensitivity search for rare K decays. - View the experimental particle physics faculty . Theoretical The Particle Theory Group, part of the  Enrico Fermi Institute  and associated with the Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics,  and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics carries out research on a wide range of theoretical topics in formal and phenomenological particle physics, including field theory, string theory, supersymmetry, the standard model and beyond, cosmology, and mathematical physics. Among the many research topics are string theory and unification, duality in gauge theory and string theory, solitons and topological structures, D-branes, non-commutative geometry, the AdS/CFT correspondence, inflationary cosmology, the cosmological constant problem, CP violation, B physics, baryogenesis, supersymmetric model building, precision electroweak measurements, low-energy supersymmetry, heavy quark physics, confinement in QCD, quantum theory of black holes, large extra dimensions, fermion mass hierarchy, and integrable systems. There are strong ties to the  Fermilab Theoretical Physics Group , the  Argonne Theoretical High Energy Group , and the  High Energy Experiment group at Chicago . Detailed information about the Particle Theory Group can be found here .  -  View the theoretical particle physics faculty .  Experimental Particle Physics Faculty Edward blucher. Professor. Co-Spokesperson, DUNE Collaboration; Director, Enrico Fermi Institute. For more information about Professor Blucher, please visit his webpage . Juan Collar Professor; experimental astrophysics. For more information about Professor Collar, please visit his webpage . David DeMille For more information about Professor DeMille, please visit his webpage . Karri DiPetrillo Assistant Professor For more information about Professor DiPetrillo, please visit her webpage . Bonnie Fleming Professor; Deputy Director and Chief Research Officer, Fermilab For more information about Professor Fleming, please visit her webpage . Henry Frisch For more information about Professor Frisch, please visit his webpage . Luca Grandi Associate Professor. For more information about Professor Grandi, please visit his webpage . Young-Kee Kim Professor; APS President-Elect. For more information about Professor Kim, please visit her webpage . David Miller For more information about Professor Miller, please visit his webpage . Mark Oreglia For more information about Professor Oreglia, please visit his webpage . James Pilcher Professor Emeritus. For more information about Professor Pilcher, please visit his webpage . Paolo Privitera For more information about Professor Privitera, please visit his webpage . David Schmitz For more information about Professor Schmitz, please visit his webpage . Melvyn Shochet For more information about Professor Shochet, please visit his webpage . For more information about Professor Wah, please visit his webpage . Theoretical Particle Physics Faculty Marcela carena. Professor (Part-time); Head of the Theory Division, Fermilab. For more information about Professor Carena, please visit her webpage . Clay Córdova Assistant Professor. For more information about Professor Córdova, please visit his webpage . Luca Delacrétaz For more information about Professor Delacrétaz, please visit his webpage . Keisuke Harigaya For more information about Professor Harigaya, please visit his webpage . Jeffrey Harvey For more information about Professor Harvey, please visit his webpage . David Kutasov For more information about Professor Kutasov, please visit his webpage . Emil Martinec For more information about Professor Martinec, please visit his webpage . Jonathan Rosner Professor Emeritus For more information about Professor Rosner, please visit his webpage . Savdeep Sethi For more information about Professor Sethi, please visit his webpage . University Professor. For more information about Professor Son, please visit his webpage . Carlos Wagner Professor (Half-time); Head High-Energy Physics Theory Group, Argonne National Lab. For more information about Professor Wagner, please visit his webpage . LianTao Wang For more information about Professor Wang, please visit his webpage . We have 7 Particle Physics (fully funded) PhD Projects, Programmes & Scholarships All locations Institution All Institutions All PhD Types All Funding Particle Physics (fully funded) PhD Projects, Programmes & Scholarships Enhancing superconducting properties of srf thin films by laser processing, phd research project. PhD Research Projects are advertised opportunities to examine a pre-defined topic or answer a stated research question. Some projects may also provide scope for you to propose your own ideas and approaches. Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide) This project is in competition for funding with other projects. Usually the project which receives the best applicant will be successful. Unsuccessful projects may still go ahead as self-funded opportunities. Applications for the project are welcome from all suitably qualified candidates, but potential funding may be restricted to a limited set of nationalities. You should check the project and department details for more information. Long scale plasmas for AWAKE proton driven plasma acceleration experiment Funded phd project (uk students only). This research project has funding attached. It is only available to UK citizens or those who have been resident in the UK for a period of 3 years or more. Some projects, which are funded by charities or by the universities themselves may have more stringent restrictions. Ph.D. opportunity join its programme of quark-flavour physics with the LHCb experiment. Fully-funded phd in sustainable high power rf amplifiers for muon colliders, top quark physics beyond the standard model at the atlas detector, competition funded phd project (uk students only). This research project is one of a number of projects at this institution. It is in competition for funding with one or more of these projects. Usually the project which receives the best applicant will be awarded the funding. The funding is only available to UK citizens or those who have been resident in the UK for a period of 3 years or more. Some projects, which are funded by charities or by the universities themselves may have more stringent restrictions. Dark matter searches with NEWS-G and future experiments Studying strong interaction with polarised probes, awaiting funding decision/possible external funding. This supervisor does not yet know if funding is available for this project, or they intend to apply for external funding once a suitable candidate is selected. Applications are welcome - please see project details for further information. FindAPhD. Copyright 2005-2024 All rights reserved. Unknown    ( change ) Have you got time to answer some quick questions about PhD study? Select your nearest city You haven’t completed your profile yet. To get the most out of FindAPhD, finish your profile and receive these benefits: Monthly chance to win one of ten £10 Amazon vouchers ; winners will be notified every month.* The latest PhD projects delivered straight to your inbox Access to our £6,000 scholarship competition Weekly newsletter with funding opportunities, research proposal tips and much more Early access to our physical and virtual postgraduate study fairs Or begin browsing FindAPhD.com or begin browsing FindAPhD.com *Offer only available for the duration of your active subscription, and subject to change. You MUST claim your prize within 72 hours, if not we will redraw. Do you want hassle-free information and advice? Create your FindAPhD account and sign up to our newsletter: Find out about funding opportunities and application tips Receive weekly advice, student stories and the latest PhD news Hear about our upcoming study fairs Save your favourite projects, track enquiries and get personalised subject updates Create your account Looking to list your PhD opportunities? Log in here . Filtering Results How to become a particle physicist Is becoming a particle physicist right for me. The first step to choosing a career is to make sure you are actually willing to commit to pursuing the career. You don’t want to waste your time doing something you don’t want to do. If you’re new here, you should read about: Still unsure if becoming a particle physicist is the right career path? Take the free CareerExplorer career test to find out if this career is right for you. Perhaps you are well-suited to become a particle physicist or another similar career! Described by our users as being “shockingly accurate”, you might discover careers you haven’t thought of before. How to become a Particle Physicist If you're interested in pursuing a career in particle physics, here are the steps you can take: Obtain a Bachelor's Degree: To become a particle physicist, you will need a strong foundation in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Start by pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Physics , Mathematics , Engineering , or a related field. You should aim for a GPA of at least 3.0, as competition for graduate programs can be intense. Gain Research Experience: Look for opportunities to work in a research lab. Many universities and research institutions offer research internships for undergraduate students. You can also participate in summer research programs, which can give you the opportunity to work with particle physicists and gain hands-on experience. Pursue a Graduate Degree: To become a particle physicist, you will need to earn a Master's and Ph.D. in Physics or a related field. Look for graduate programs with a strong emphasis on particle physics, such as those at CERN, Fermilab, or SLAC. During your graduate studies, you will work on research projects, take advanced courses, and work closely with your research advisor. Get Involved in Particle Physics Research: Attend conferences and seminars, join professional organizations like the American Physical Society or the European Physical Society, and network with other particle physicists. This will help you learn about the latest research and connect with potential employers. Apply for Postdoctoral Positions: After earning your Ph.D., you will likely need to complete one or more postdoctoral positions before securing a permanent position in particle physics. Look for postdoc positions at universities or research institutions with strong particle physics programs. Pursue a Career in Particle Physics: Once you have gained experience as a postdoc, you can apply for permanent positions as a particle physicist. These positions may be at universities, national laboratories, or research institutions. You can also consider working in the private sector, such as for a company that specializes in particle accelerator technology. Internships Internships are a great way for particle physicists to gain hands-on experience in their field and to develop their skills in a practical setting. Some potential options for internships for particle physicists could include: CERN: CERN offers several internship programs for students and recent graduates, including the Technical Student Programme, the Summer Student Programme, and the Doctoral Student Programme. The Technical Student Programme is for students enrolled in a technical or engineering degree program, while the Summer Student Programme and the Doctoral Student Programme are for students and recent graduates in particle physics, engineering, or computer science. Interns at CERN have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge research projects in areas such as particle accelerators, detector technologies, and data analysis. Fermilab: Fermilab offers several internship programs for undergraduate and graduate students, including the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) and the Graduate Student Research Program (GSRP). SULI is a 10-week program that offers students the opportunity to work on research projects in areas such as particle accelerators, detector technologies, and theoretical physics. GSRP is a longer-term program that offers graduate students the opportunity to work on research projects at Fermilab for up to a year. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: SLAC offers several internship programs for undergraduate and graduate students, including the Summer Research Program, the Visiting Graduate Student Research Program, and the Faculty and Student Team Program. These programs offer students the opportunity to work on research projects in areas such as accelerator technologies, particle detectors, and dark matter research. National Institute of Standards and Technology: NIST offers several internship programs for undergraduate and graduate students, including the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and the NIST-NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship Program. These programs offer students the opportunity to work on research projects related to particle detection, accelerator technologies, and other areas of particle physics research. National Science Foundation: The NSF offers several internship programs for undergraduate and graduate students, including the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program and the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). These programs offer students the opportunity to work on research projects at universities or national laboratories in a variety of fields, including physics. Industry internships: Particle physicists may also find internships in industry settings, such as in the field of medical physics or in companies developing particle detectors or accelerator technologies. These internships may offer the opportunity to work on research projects or to apply particle physics concepts to real-world applications. Organizations and Associations There are several professional organizations and associations for particle physicists that can provide valuable resources, networking opportunities, and career support. Here are some examples: International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP): This is a global organization that promotes physics research, education, and application. IUPAP supports 25 specialized international commissions, including the Commission on Particles and Fields, which focuses on particle physics research. American Physical Society (APS): The APS is a leading professional organization for physicists in the United States. It offers a wide range of resources, including conferences, publications, and networking opportunities. The APS Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) is a subsection that focuses on particle physics research. European Physical Society (EPS): The EPS is a non-profit organization that promotes physics research, education, and communication in Europe. The High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the EPS is a subsection that focuses on particle physics research. CERN: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, is a leading particle physics research center located in Geneva, Switzerland. It is the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and hosts the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. Fermilab: The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is a particle physics research center located in Batavia, Illinois, USA. It hosts several particle accelerators, including the Tevatron, which was the world's largest particle accelerator until the LHC was built. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a particle physics research center located in Menlo Park, California, USA. It hosts the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), which was the world's longest linear accelerator until the LHC was built. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Department of Physics and Astronomy Particle Physics PhD Positions Applications for Particle Physics PhD projects within our group are open all-year round, however funded PhD projects normally start in October with the applications being reviewed and invitations sent out for interviews in January-March. The STFC/UKRI funding body which provides the funding for most Particle Physics PhD studentships around the country does not require offer holders to make the final decision until April such that there will be a waiting list for candidates until April/Mai. Applications can be submitted here . Generally, the candidates should have a good knowledge of particle physics and programming skills. Knowledge of particle astrophysics and nuclear physics is desirable for some of the projects. Travel to and extended stays at the experimental sites are expected for a number of projects (Japan, CERN/Switzerland, USA). The projects are open to home and international candidates but international students may need to secure funding to pay fees and living expenses. It is sufficient to apply to one of the projects to be considered for all, but please state clearly your priorities and interests. Each year a number of funded places is available which are allocated according to the priorities of the group and the quality of the candidates.   Below, short descriptions of generally available projects can be found with longer versions and links to recent projects available here . - Prof E Daw This Ph.D. project involves searches for hidden sector dark matter, including QCD axions and axion like particles (ALPs). Our group at Sheffield leads the 'Quantum Sensors for the Hidden Sector' collaboration, and collaborates with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) collaboration in the USA. A Ph.D. in this area would involve elements of detector simulation, lab based characterisation of detectors and detector parts, instrumentation design and operation, characterisation of microwave electronics both at cryogenic temperatures (to 10mK) and at room temperature, and data analysis.  - Prof Vitaly Kudryavtsev, Prof D R Tovey LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a high-sensitivity dark matter experiment currently operating in the deep underground laboratory at SURF (South Dakota, USA). LZ is sensitive to dark matter particles (WIMPs) predicted by many leading theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, such as supersymmetry. The particle physics and particle astrophysics (PPPA) group at the University of Sheffield has been involved in the LZ experiment since the very beginning of its design and construction with a prime responsibility of developing software for modelling and data analysis, simulations, understanding background radiation, and analysis of experimental data. The project will involve the analysis of data from the LZ experiment and may focus on various physics topics including background model and identification of possible signal.  - Prof Vitaly Kudryavtsev DUNE is a large international project to design, construct and operate a multi-kilotonne scale liquid argon detector for neutrino physics, neutrino astrophysics and a search for physics phenomena beyond the Standard Model. This PhD project will focus on development of a methodology for DUNE detector calibration, in particular using atmospheric muons. It may also include development of analysis based on machine learning techniques to search for nucleon decay events and separate them from a much larger background from cosmic-ray muons and atmospheric neutrinos. Participation in the SBND (Short-Baseline Near Detector) experiment at Fermilab is possible via detector operation shifts and data analysis.  - Dr S Cartwright, Dr M Malek  The particle physics and particle astrophysics (PPPA) group at the University of Sheffield has a long-standing involvement in Japan’s long-baseline neutrino programme. Sheffield PhD students working on the Japanese long-baseline programme typically work on T2K, which gives them the opportunity to analyse data from a currently operating long-baseline neutrino experiment. However there is also the option of involvement with either the Super-K or Hyper-K experiments (in addition to T2K).  - Dr T Vickey It's possible that the 125 GeV Higgs boson is only one of several neutrally-charged Higgs bosons predicted by theories beyond the Standard Model. Many of these theories predict the existence of a more massive Higgs boson that is able to decay into two lighter 125 GeV Higgses.  The student will develop analysis strategies to search for the production of two neutral 125 GeV Higgs bosons at ATLAS. Searches will focus on a final state where one of the Higgs bosons decays into two tau leptons, and the second Higgs boson decays to a pair of bottom quarks. The student will participate in developing algorithms for tau lepton identification, and will also have the opportunity to assist with silicon module construction for the ATLAS tracker upgrade.  - Dr K Lohwasser, Dr C Anastopoulos A position is open for an enthusiastic PhD student to conduct research at the energy frontier at the ATLAS experiment. The main topic is to investigate further the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking and to search for new physics phenomena using Higgs and diboson measurements. The PhD project will involve heavily data analysis, statistics, advanced analytical classification methods and possibly machine learning. The PhD will prepare equally well for a career in industry and academia. - Prof D Costanzo, Prof D Tovey The student will work on the analysis of the data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider to search for new particles that are postulated by Supersymmetry. The student will be focusing on searches where particles decay into heavy-flavour quarks with a large missing transverse energy also observed. The work is done in collaboration with an international team and the student will also be expected to participate in the ATLAS experimental work.  - Dr T Vickey, Dr K Lohwasser A position is open for an enthusiastic PhD student to conduct research in developing silicon sensor technologies in use at the energy frontier at the ATLAS experiment. This project will focus on the construction of detector modules for the new all-silicon Inner Tracking detector (ITk), part of which is being built in the University of Sheffield Semiconductor Detector Development Facility.  The PhD project will involve practical work in the lab but also the interpretation of results and design of new experiments. Cosmic-ray muons are known to be useful in applications beyond particle astrophysics. They have helped with mapping structure of volcanoes and with finding voids in various geological structures. Other possible applications include studies of geological repositories including monitoring carbon capture and tracing illicit nuclear materials. This computational PhD project offers an opportunity for a student to apply the knowledge of particle and astroparticle physics, and detector technology in areas which are linked to key issues of the contemporary world: climate change, nuclear security etc. One particular application of cosmic-ray muons to be addressed in this project is the identification of materials in cargo.  Research Excellence Framework 2021 We have been rated 1st in the UK in terms of the quality of our research. In the latest REF, 100 per cent of research and impact from our department has been classed as world-leading or internationally excellent. Search for PhD opportunities at Sheffield and be part of our world-leading research. Get the Reddit app All about particle physics. Is a PhD in particle physics useful/valued in industry? I am currently doing my PhD in particle physics (BSM phenomenology), now 7 months into it. I need some advice about the value of doing this PhD for future jobs, as I am doubting it is the right choice for my career. I am very sure I won't stay in academia if I finish my PhD, and so I would go into industry jobs. My current concern is that such a PhD won't be valued in industry. If I wish to go work in tech companies, renewable energies, data science, etc, how useful is it for me to complete my PhD in particle physics? Is it better to just go right into industry and get experience in those areas? I like the PhD itself and the research I am doing, but I am very worried about my future and that this PhD won't be useful and won't be valued, and that other people with a more industry oriented studies will be more competent than me for the job. I would love to hear your experiences if you went to industry after your PhD! Was it worth the PhD? Did they value you for having it? Did you get a certain job because you have a PhD in particle physics? Thanks in advance. 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Access more than 20 years of online content Manage which e-mail newsletters you want to receive Read about the big breakthroughs and innovations across 13 scientific topics Explore the key issues and trends within the global scientific community Choose which e-mail newsletters you want to receive Reset your password Please enter the e-mail address you used to register to reset your password Note: The verification e-mail to change your password should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder. If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact [email protected] Registration complete Thank you for registering with Physics World If you'd like to change your details at any time, please visit My account Particle and nuclear Tsung-Dao Lee: Nobel laureate famed for work on parity violation dies aged 97 The Chinese-American particle physicist Tsung-Dao Lee died on 4 August at the age of 97. Lee shared half of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics with Chen Ning Yang for their theoretical work that overturned the notion that parity is conserved in the weak force – one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Known as “parity violation”, it was was proved experimentally by, among others, Chien-Shiung Wu . Born on on 24 November 1926 in Shanghai, Lee began studying physics in 1943 at the National Chekiang University (now known as Zhejiang University) and, later, at National Southwest Associated University in Kunming. In 1946 Lee moved to the US to the Univeristy of Chicago on a Chinese government fellowship, doing a PhD under the guidance of Enrico Fermi, which he completed in 1950. After his PhD, Lee worked at Yerkes Astronomical Observatory in Wisconsin, the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before moving to Columbia University in 1953. Three years later, he became the youngest-ever full professor at Columbia, remaining at the university until retiring in 2012. Looking in the mirror It was at Columbia where Lee did his Nobel-prize-winning work on parity, which is a property of elementary particles that expresses their behaviour upon reflection in a mirror. If the parity of a particle does not change during reflection, parity is said to be conserved. But since the early 1950s, physicists had been puzzled by the decays of two subatomic particles, known as tau and theta. These particles, also known as K-mesons, are identical except that the tau decays into three pions with a net parity of -1, while a theta particle decays into two pions with a net parity of +1. This puzzling observation meant that either the tau and theta are different particles or – controversially – that parity in the weak interaction is not conserved, with Lee and Yang proposing various ways to test their ideas ( Phys. Rev. 104 254) . Credit where credit’s due? Wu, who was also working at Columbia, then suggested an experiment based on the radioactive decay of unstable cobalt-60 nuclei into nickel-60. In what became known as the “Wu experiment”, she and colleagues from the National Bureau of Standards used a magnetic field to align the cobalt nuclei with their spins parallel, before counting the number of electrons emitted in both an upward and downward direction. Wu and her team found that far more electrons were being emitted downwards then upwards, which for parity to be conserved would be the same for both the normal state and in the mirror image. Yet when the field was reversed, as it would be in the mirror image, they found that more electrons were detected upwards, proving that parity is violated in the weak interaction. For their work, Lee and Ning Yang shared the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics. Then just 30, Lee was the second youngest Nobel-prize winning scientist after Lawrence Bragg , who was 25 when he shared the 1915 Nobel Prize for Physics with his father, William Henry Bragg. It has been argued that Wu should have shared the prize too for her experimental evidence of parity violation, although the story is complicated because two other groups were also working on similar experiments at the same time. Influential physicist Lee went on to publish several books including Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory in 1981 and Science and Art in 2000. As well as the Nobel prize, he was also awarded the Albert Einstein Award in 1957 and the Matteucci Medal in 1995. Overlooked for the Nobel: Chien-Shiung Wu At a reception in 2011 to mark Lee’s retirement , William Zajc, chair of Columbia’s physics department, noted that it was “impossible to overstate [Lee’s] influence on the department of physics, on Columbia and on the entire field of physics.” Lee, on the other hand, noted that retirement is “like gardening”. “You may not be cultivating a new species, but you can still keep the old beautiful thing going on,” he added. Want to read more? Note: The verification e-mail to complete your account registration should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder. If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact [email protected] . E-mail Address Physics World Particle & Nuclear Briefing Read our free digital issue of the Physics World Particle & Nuclear Briefing today. Nuclear fusion US plasma physicists propose construction of a 'flexible' stellarator facility Discover more from physics world. Everyday science Rumours spread like nuclear fission, say physicists US plasma physicists propose construction of a ‘flexible’ stellarator facility Nuclear physics Research update Smashing heavier ions creates superheavy livermorium Related jobs, controls software developer (sy-rf-cs-2024-117-grae), monte carlo specialist – radiation transport (231), detector engineer, related events. Particle and nuclear | Symposium World Nuclear Symposium 2024 4—6 September 2024 | London, UK Particle and nuclear | Symposium Fifth International Symposium on the Casimir Effect 15—21 September 2024 | Piran, Slovenia Nuclear power | Conference Europe Nuclear Energy & SMR Conference (ENES 2024) 13—14 November 2024 | Prague, Czech Republic Purdue researchers trap atoms, forcing them to serve as photonic transistors This groundbreaking research demonstrates a potential for quantum networks based on cold-atom integrated nanophotonic circuits. Researchers at Purdue University have trapped alkali atoms (cesium) on an integrated photonic circuit, which behaves like a transistor for photons (the smallest energy unit of light) similar to electronic transistors. These trapped atoms demonstrate the potential to build a quantum network based on cold-atom integrated nanophotonic circuits. The team, led by Chen-Lung Hung , associate professor of physics and astronomy at the Purdue University College of Science, published their discovery in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review X. “We developed a technique to use lasers to cool and tightly trap atoms on an integrated nanophotonic circuit, where light propagates in a small photonic ‘wire’ or, more precisely, a waveguide that is more than 200 times thinner than a human hair,” explains Hung, who is also a member of the Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute . “These atoms are ‘frozen’ to negative 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit or merely 0.00002 degrees above the absolute zero temperature and are essentially standing still. At this cold temperature, the atoms can be captured by a ‘tractor beam’ aimed at the photonic waveguide and are placed over it at a distance much shorter than the wavelength of light, around 300 nanometers or roughly the size of a virus. At this distance, the atoms can very efficiently interact with photons confined in the photonic waveguide. Using state-of-the-art nanofabrication instruments in the Birck Nanotechnology Center, we pattern the photonic waveguide in a circular shape at a diameter of around 30 microns (three times smaller than a human hair) to form a so-called microring resonator. Light would circulate within the microring resonator and interact with the trapped atoms.” A key aspect function the team demonstrates in this research is that this atom-coupled microring resonator serves like a ‘transistor’ for photons. They can use these trapped atoms to gate the flow of light through the circuit. If the atoms are in the correct state, photons can transmit through the circuit. Photons are entirely blocked if the atoms are in another state. The stronger the atoms interact with the photons, the more efficient this gate is. “We have trapped up to 70 atoms that could collectively couple to photons and gate their transmission on an integrated photonic chip. This has not been realized before,” says Xinchao Zhou, graduate student at Purdue Physics and Astronomy. Zhou is also the recipient of this year’s Bilsand Dissertation Fellowship . The entire research team is based out of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Hung served as principal investigator and supervised the project. Zhou performed the experiment to trap atoms on the integrated circuit, which was designed and fabricated in-house by Tzu-Han Chang, a former postdoc now working with Prof. Sunil Bhave at the Birck Nanotechnology Center . The critical portions of the experiment were set up by Zhou and Hikaru Tamura, a former postdoc at Purdue at the time of the research and now an assistant professor at the Institute of Molecular Science in Japan. “Our technique, which we detailed in the paper, allows us to very efficiently laser cool many atoms on an integrated photonic circuit. Once many atoms are trapped, they can collectively interact with light propagating on the photonic waveguide,” says Zhou. “This is unique for our system because all the atoms are the same and indistinguishable, so they could couple to light in the same way and build up phase coherence, allowing atoms to interact with light collectively with stronger strength. Just imagine a boat moving faster when all rowers row the boat in synchronization compared with unsynchronized motion. In contrast, solid-state emitters embedded in a photonic circuit are hardly ‘the same’ due to slightly different surroundings influencing each emitter. It is much harder for many solid-state emitters to build up phase coherence and collectively interact with photons like cold atoms. We could use cold atoms trapped on the circuit to study new collective effects,” says Hung. The platform demonstrated in this research could provide a photonic link for future distributed quantum computing based on neutral atoms. It could also serve as a new experimental platform for studying collective light-matter interactions and for synthesizing quantum degenerate trapped gases or ultracold molecules. “Unlike electronic transistors used in daily life, our atom-coupled integrated photonic circuit obeys the principles of quantum superposition,” explains Hung. “This allows us to manipulate and store quantum information in trapped atoms, which are quantum bits known as qubits. Our circuit may also efficiently transfer stored quantum information into photons that could ‘fly’ through the photonic wire and a fiber network to communicate with other atom-coupled integrated circuits or atom-photon interfaces. Our research demonstrates a potential to build a quantum network based on cold-atom integrated nanophotonic circuits.” The team has been working on this research area for several years and plans to pursue it with vigor. Their past research discovery tied to this work include recent breakthroughs such as the realization of the ‘tractor beam’ method in 2023 listing Zhou as first author, and the realization of highly efficient optical fiber-coupling to a photonic chip in 2022 with a pending US patent application. New research directions have opened up due to the team’s successful demonstration of atoms being very efficiently cooled and trapped on a circuit. The future for this research is bright with many avenues to explore. “There are several promising next steps to explore,” says Hung. “We could arrange the trapped atoms in an organized array along the photonic waveguide. These atoms can collectively couple to the waveguide through constructive interference but cannot radiate photons into the surrounding free space due to destructive interference. We aim to build the first nanophotonic platform to realize the so-called ‘selective radiance’ proposed by theorists in recent years to improve the fidelity of photon storage in a quantum system. We could also try to form new states of quantum matter on an integrated photonic circuit to study few- and many-body physics with atom-photon interactions. We could cool the atoms closer to the absolute zero temperature to reach quantum degeneracy so that the trapped atoms could form a gas of strongly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate. We may also try synthesizing cold molecules from the trapped atoms with the enhanced radiative coupling from the microring resonator.” This work was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant No. FA9550-22-1-0031) and the National Science Foundation (Grant No. PHY-1848316 and ECCS-2134931). This work was published with support from the Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund. Quantum science and engineering is one of four dimensions within Purdue Computes , a major initiative that enables the university to advance to the forefront with unparalled excellence at scale.  About the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University    Purdue’s Department of Physics and Astronomy has a rich and long history dating back to 1904. Our faculty and students are exploring nature at all length scales, from the subatomic to the macroscopic and everything in between. With an excellent and diverse community of faculty, postdocs and students who are pushing new scientific frontiers, we offer a dynamic learning environment, an inclusive research community and an engaging network of scholars.   Physics and Astronomy is one of the seven departments within the Purdue University College of Science. World-class research is performed in astrophysics, atomic and molecular optics, accelerator mass spectrometry, biophysics, condensed matter physics, quantum information science, and particle and nuclear physics. Our state-of-the-art facilities are in the Physics Building, but our researchers also engage in interdisciplinary work at Discovery Park District at Purdue, particularly the Birck Nanotechnology Center and the Bindley Bioscience Center. We also participate in global research including at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, many national laboratories (such as Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermilab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, etc.), the James Webb Space Telescope, and several observatories around the world.        About Purdue University    Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at  https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives . Contributors:     Chen-Lung Hung , associate professor of physics and astronomy at the Purdue University College of Science Xinchao Zhou , graduate student at Purdue Physics and Astronomy Written by  Cheryl Pierce ,  Communications Specialist Alumni News Interactions Newsletters Travel Information Department of Physics and Astronomy, 525 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2036 • Phone: (765) 494-3000 • Fax: (765) 494-0706 Copyright © 2024 Purdue University | An equal access/equal opportunity university | Copyright Complaints | DOE Degree Scorecards Trouble with this page? Accessibility issues ? Please contact the College of Science . Share full article Advertisement Supported by Tsung-Dao Lee, 97, Physicist Who Challenged a Law of Nature, Dies At 31, he and a colleague won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that subatomic particles, contrary to what scientists thought, are not always symmetrical. By Dylan Loeb McClain Tsung-Dao Lee, a Chinese American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for overturning what had been considered a fundamental law of nature — that particles are always symmetrical — died on Sunday at his home in San Francisco. He was 97. His death was announced in a joint statement by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai and the China Center for Advanced Science and Technology in Beijing. Dr. Lee was a longtime professor at Columbia University. The theory that Dr. Lee overturned was called the law of conservation of parity, which said that every phenomenon and its mirror image should behave precisely the same. At the time he challenged the theory, in 1956, it had been widely accepted for 30 years. Dr. Lee was then a young professor at Columbia, where he had been promoted to full professor at age 29 — the youngest in the university’s history at that point. He had become intrigued by a problem involving the decay of so-called K mesons, which are subatomic particles. These particles decay all the time, forming electrons, neutrinos and photons. Experiments had shown that when K mesons decayed, some exhibited changes that suggested that each differed from the others. But they also had identical masses and life expectancies, indicating that they were the same. This apparent contradiction created quite a conundrum for physicists. They had assumed that weak nuclear forces, like meson decay, obeyed the law of conservation of parity just like the two other fundamental forces that govern quantum physics: strong nuclear forces, which bind protons and neutrons together in the nucleus, and electromagnetic forces, which govern the attraction and repulsion of electric charges and the behavior of light. In other words, scientists had assumed that the orientation of weak nuclear forces could always be reversed. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Suggestions or feedback? 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A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT." Previous image Next image Every now and then, Or Hen, who recently received tenure as an associate professor of physics at MIT, will refer back to a file that he has kept since middle school. The file is a comprehensive assessment of Hen’s learning disabilities, stemming from dysgraphia — a neurological condition in which someone has difficulty translating their thoughts into written form. Hen was diagnosed with a severe case of dysgraphia as a kindergartener. In middle school, due to an administrative snafu, the school was unaware of his condition and, lacking proper support, Hen failed most of his classes. It wasn’t until one teacher took a special interest that Hen was sent for a detailed assessment of his learning abilities. That assessment, which Hen did not read until later, when he was well into his undergraduate degree in physics, was for him a revelation and validation. “I saw a lot of ‘he’s bad at this, and not good at that,’ and it went through all the things I failed at,” Hen recalls. “But there was one test where I did extremely well, and which they had bold-faced.” It was a test of nonverbal thinking, or abstract comprehension, assessing Hen’s ability to conceptually pare down complex ideas to their fundamental core. In this test, Hen scored in the 99th percentile. Fittingly, by the time Hen read this, he was already immersed in studies of abstract concepts and systems in nuclear physics. On his own, he had gravitated to a field that suited his strengths. Reading the assessment gave him confidence in his own instincts. “They wrote that ‘this skill is particularly strong in him, and you should push him toward areas that utilize it,’” Hen says. He brings this up to students at MIT today, not to brag, but as a guide. “I try to emphasize that there is more than one path to success,” Hen says. “Try to think about what you’re good at, and then do the hard work of finding out what area, group, subfield, can utilize that. Find the thing you bring that’s unique, and build on that. Because then you really shine.” Today, Hen and his research group are probing the inner workings of the nucleus, the interactions between protons and neutrons, and their even smaller constituents of quarks and gluons, which are the basic ingredients that hold together all the visible matter in the universe. Hen seeks connections between how these particles behave and how their interactions shape the visible universe and extreme astrophysical phenomena such as neutron stars. “A lot of physics, in my mind, is taking complex systems with lots of details and abstracting away the details to seek the main principles that drive everything,” he says. A frontier of ideas Hen grew up in the countryside of Jerusalem, Israel, as part of a moshav — a small Jewish village, where his family worked as farmers, raising chickens for their eggs. In kindergarten, once Hen was diagnosed with dysgraphia, his parents sought out any available resources to help him with his writing. “I think my mother’s entire salary went toward corrective lessons,” Hen recalls. In middle school, once the records of his condition were transferred to the school, and an assessment was made of his abilities, Hen was given permission to take his exams orally. Rather than writing his answers, he would sit with a teacher and talk it out. To this day, he credits his loquacious nature to those early, formative years. “Everyone who knows me knows I talk a lot,” Hen says. “And part of that was the way I was able to learn by talking about the material.” Once he could work around his dysgraphia, however, Hen soon became bored by the content of his lessons, and in high school, he routinely skipped class. A teacher, seeing his potential, told his parents about an outreach program at the nearby Hebrew University, which Hen’s teacher thought might challenge the boy in ways that high school could not. In his last two years of high school, Hen took part in the program and enrolled in a couple university classes in programming, which he quickly took to. After graduation, he attended Hebrew University full-time, double-majoring in computer engineering and physics — a topic that he thought he might like, as his older brother had also majored in the topic. One class, early on in his first year, was especially motivating. The class explored ideas in modern physics, and students got to hear from different physicists about the concepts and phenomena they were tackling in the moment. “It showed us that the beginning of our studies may be hard and annoying, but this is what you’re working toward,” Hen says. “In that class, we learned about quantum mechanics and nonlinear solids and astrophysics, and it just gave us a view of the frontier of the field.” At the core After completing his undergraduate degrees, Hen joined the Israeli Defense Forces, which is a mandatory service for all Israeli citizens. He spent seven years in the army, working as a researcher in a physics laboratory. In tandem with his military service, Hen was also pursuing a PhD in physics, and would make the short trip to Tel-Aviv University once a week and on weekends to work on his degree. There, he got to know an eccentric and beloved professor who took a chance on Hen and offered him a rare opportunity: to travel to the United States to help build a new particle detector. The detector would be based at Jefferson Laboratory, a facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy that houses a huge particle accelerator, designed to collide beams of electrons with various atomic nuclei. With a particle detector, physicists could essentially snap pictures of a collision and its aftermath, to tease out the subatomic constituents and their properties, and how they interact to make up an atom’s nuclear structure. Hen spent a summer at the facility, helping to build a neutron detector that physicists hoped would shed light on “short-range correlations” — extremely brief, quantum-mechanical fluctuations that can occur between some protons and neutrons within an atom’s nucleus. When these particles get so close as to touch each other, their interactions become stronger, though only for a moment before they flit away. It’s thought that these short-range correlations are the source of most of the kinetic energy in a nucleus, which itself is the basis of all visible matter in the universe. “More than half the kinetic energy in a nucleus comes from these weird states,” Hen says. “If you ever want to understand atomic nuclei and visible matter at its core, you have to also understand short-range correlations.” Helping to build the neutron detector was a gratifying combination of hands-on work and abstract thinking, and from then on, Hen was hooked on experimental nuclear physics. After completing his PhD, and a thesis on short-range correlations, Hen headed to MIT, where he interviewed for a postdoc position as a Pappalardo Fellow in the Laboratory of Nuclear Science. As he chatted with one person after another, he eventually found himself in the office of then-department head Peter Fisher, who encouraged Hen to also apply for an open faculty position. A few months later, in 2015, he found himself in the fortunate position of starting at MIT as a postdoc, having already accepted a junior faculty position he would start at MIT 18 months later. “MIT took a bet on me,” he says. “That’s the unique thing about MIT. They saw something in me that I didn’t see back then, and they supported me.” Particle connections In his first years on campus, Hen continued his work in short-range correlations. His group used data from particle accelerators around the world to develop a universal understanding of short-range correlations in a way that can be applied across many scales. It could, for instance, predict how the interactions would determine correlations in one type of atom versus another, and shape the behavior of much more dense and extreme phenomena such as neutron stars. Hen also expanded into the field of neutrinos, which are nearly massless particles that are the most abundant particles in the universe. The properties of neutrinos are thought to be the key to the origins of matter, though neutrinos are notoriously difficult to study in detail because their detection requires detailed understanding of their interaction with atomic nuclei. Hen found that, instead of depending on the elusive interactions of neutrinos, there might be a way to abstract that behavior to that of a more detectable particle, to better understand the neutrino itself. By analyzing data from electron-beam accelerators around the world, his group founded the “electrons-for-neutrinos” effort, which developed a framework that essentially transposed the interactions of an electron to describe how a neutrino would behave under similar circumstances — a tool that will help physicists interpret data from hard-to-pin-down neutrino experiments. Reflecting on how he determines which direction to take his research, Hen says: “I have a big nose, and I like to talk to people and understand what they’re doing and whether can I do something there or not. I like to build communities, bring in people with different abilities, and do something big together, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Big science Hen got a chance to start up a big-science collaboration, as part of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a concept for a particle accelerator that collides electrons with protons, neutrons, and nuclei to study the particles’ internal structures and how they are held together by the “strong nuclear force,” which is known as the strongest force in nature. In late 2019, the EIC was a focus of a meeting at MIT, in which physicists from around the world gathered to discuss the project’s recent go-ahead, granted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). The next step was to design a detector, and multiple versions were considered. Hen, who stopped in out of curiosity, wound up joining a community-wide effort to develop a menu of possible detectors that could be built at the EIC. Hen then took a leadership role in the next step to put forward a specific detector design for the DoE to fund. Working closely with physicists Tanja Horn and John Lajoie, they called experts to join the effort, eventually gathering physicists from 98 institutions. Thanks to their collaborative efforts the DoE ultimately chose their design over a competing one. Hen and his colleagues subsequently reached out to that other group to join forces to further evolve and fine-tune the design. “We combined strengths,” Hen says. “We are doing big science. And when you do big science, there’s lots of talented people involved. I’ve learned through this process that it’s all about how you interact with people and adapt yourself to do science, together.” Today, Hen is overseeing aspects of the EIC’s science community that is leading its development, which is projected to break ground in the next few years. In the meantime, he continues to expand projects in his research group, and works to mentor his students and postdocs, just as he was supported through his early career. “I’m a very fortunate person, in that I had so many mentors in my life, and they all believed in me and saw things I didn’t,” Hen says. “They noticed that I’m different in whichever capacity, and tried to squeeze that lemon. That was a big thing for me.”  Share this news article on: Related links. Laboratory for Nuclear Science Department of Physics Related Topics Nuclear science and engineering Related Articles Fourteen MIT School of Science professors receive tenure for 2022 and 2023 Seven from MIT named American Physical Society Fellows for 2022 Physicists flip particle accelerator setup to gain a clearer view of atomic nuclei No matter the size of a nuclear party, some protons and neutrons will always pair up and dance The force is strong in neutron stars Previous item Next item More MIT News Hamsa Balakrishnan appointed associate dean of engineering Read full story → MIT School of Science launches Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy Empowering the next generation of scientists in Africa Scientists pin down the origins of the moon’s tenuous atmosphere Scientists find a human “fingerprint” in the upper troposphere’s increasing ozone A bright and airy hub for climate at MIT More news on MIT News homepage → Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA Map (opens in new window) Events (opens in new window) People (opens in new window) Careers (opens in new window) Accessibility Social Media Hub MIT on Facebook MIT on YouTube MIT on Instagram 230 COMMENTS Particle Physics PhD Scholarships and funding. 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Introduction to Nuclear and Particle Physics This is an introductory graduate-level course on the phenomenology and experimental foundations of nuclear and particle physics, including the fundamental forces and particles, as well as composites. Emphasis is on the experimental establishment of the leading models, and the theoretical tools and experimental apparatus used to establish them. PhD Program Expected Progress of Physics Graduate Student to Ph.D. This document describes the Physics Department's expectations for the progress of a typical graduate student from admission to award of a PhD. Because students enter the program with different training and backgrounds and because thesis research by its very nature is unpredictable, the time-frame for individual students Physics Graduate study in the Department of Physics is strongly focused on research leading to the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. ... Primary research areas are theoretical and experimental elementary particle physics, theoretical and experimental gravity and cosmology, experimental nuclear and atomic physics, mathematical physics, theoretical ... Particle Physics Particle Physics. Broadly defined, particle physics aims to answer the fundamental questions of the nature of mass, energy, and matter, and their relations to the cosmological history of the Universe. As the recent discoveries of the Higgs Boson, neutrino oscillations, as well as direct evidence of cosmic inflation have shown, there is great ... Postgraduate Research Opportunities The research performed in this PhD position seeks to deepen our understanding of the fundamental theories that describe our universe. Theories addressing the open problems not explained within the Standard Model of particle physics, for example the question what constitutes dark matter, how neutrinos obtain their masses, or whether new physics can explain the difference between the matter and ... Graduate Program The department provides full tuition scholarships, stipends, and student medical insurance for essentially all graduate students through a combination of teaching fellowships, research assistantships, and university fellowships. The Physics Department is centrally located on Boston University's main Charles River Campus. Boston is a major ... PhD in Physics I. Proficiency in four core fields. Students can demonstrate proficiency through: A final grade of A- or better in PHY 131: Advanced Classical Mechanics meets the proficiency requirement for classical mechanics. An average combined final grade of A- or better in PHY 145: Classical Electromagnetic Theory I and PHY 146: Classical Electromagnetic ... PhDs in Particle Physics A PhD in Particle Physics opens up a wide range of exciting career opportunities. Many graduates go on to work in academia, conducting further research and teaching at universities. Others find employment in research institutions, national laboratories, or government agencies, contributing to groundbreaking discoveries and technological ... PhD Particle Physics The Manchester Particle Physics group performs theoretical and experimental research into the fundamental constituents of matter and the interactions that govern them. The group includes over 50 academic, research, and technical staff and over 50 postgraduate research students, making it one of the largest groups in the country. PhD in Particle Physics Doing a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics at Birmingham University We have a large particle physics group, with currently around 40 academic and support staff members and 25 PhD students, and extensive local facilities. The particle physics group is housed in recently renovated offices with excellent computing facilities, near to the centre ... PhD in Physics The PhD in Physics is a full-time period of research which introduces or builds upon, research skills and specialist knowledge. Students are assigned a research supervisor, a specialist in part or all of the student's chosen research field, and join a research group which might vary in size between a handful to many tens of individuals. Doctoral Programme in Particle Physics and Universe Sciences The academic subjects of the Doctoral Programme in Particle Physics and Universe Sciences (PAPU) include theoretical physics, astronomy and physics (specialization lines of space physics and particle and nuclear physics). PAPU covers theoretical, experimental and observational research fields in elementary particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics, space physics and planetary astrophysics. PhD projects in Particle Physics Theory About Particle Physics Theory. The research group in Particle Physics Theory at the University of Edinburgh is one of the largest in the UK. We have a large group of PhD students from around the world: recent examples include students from Ireland, Germany, Italy, the United States, as well as the UK. We are always interested in good students ... Particle Physics Experimental. The experimental High Energy Physics group is active in a range of experiments studying the fundamental constituents of matter. The work includes accelerator-based experiments, studies using nuclear reactors, and the detection of new particles from astrophysical sources. This research takes place within the Enrico Fermi Institute ... Particle Physics (fully funded) PhD Projects, Programmes ... The Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) group at the University of Warwick have an immediate opportunity for a Ph.D. student to join its programme of quark-flavour physics with the LHCb experiment. Read more. Supervisor: Prof T Gershon. Year round applications PhD Research Project Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only) How to become a particle physicist Obtain a Bachelor's Degree: To become a particle physicist, you will need a strong foundation in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Start by pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field. You should aim for a GPA of at least 3.0, as competition for graduate programs can be intense. Particle Physics PhD Positions Particle Physics PhD Positions. Applications for Particle Physics PhD projects within our group are open all-year round, however funded PhD projects normally start in October with the applications being reviewed and invitations sent out for interviews in January-March. Off. The STFC/UKRI funding body which provides the funding for most Particle ... Is a PhD in particle physics useful/valued in industry? Second, physics PhDs are still valued. However, "peak" physics PhD was about 5 years ago, when anyone who wanted data science and didn't know what to do was just hoovering up physics PhDs. Today, the interview process is relatively more mature meaning you will need to succeed at actual technical interviews. Tsung-Dao Lee: Nobel laureate famed for work on parity violation dies Particle pioneer: Tsung-Dao Lee paved the way to our understanding that parity is violated in the weak force (courtesy: CERN) The Chinese-American particle physicist Tsung-Dao Lee died on 4 August at the age of 97. Lee shared half of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics with Chen Ning Yang for their theoretical work that overturned the notion that parity is conserved in the weak force - one of ... PDF Cosmic microwave background experiments could probe connection between particle physics is that it does not only describe all elementary particles ... the groundwork for Ming's PhD project. At the time of the study, Lei Ming was a visiting PhD student at Cosmic microwave background experiments could probe connection ... Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, suggests that this measurement could help to explore the connection between cosmic inflation and particle physics. "One of the most astonishing ... Nobel Prize-winning physicist Tsung-Dao Lee dies at age 97 Lee, whose work advanced the understanding of particle physics, was one of the great masters in the field, according to a joint obituary released Monday by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at Shanghai ... Purdue researchers trap atoms, forcing them to serve as photonic This has not been realized before," says Xinchao Zhou, graduate student at Purdue Physics and Astronomy. ... biophysics, condensed matter physics, quantum information science, and particle and nuclear physics. Our state-of-the-art facilities are in the Physics Building, but our researchers also engage in interdisciplinary work at Discovery ... Tsung-Dao Lee, 97, Physicist Who Challenged a Law of Nature, Dies Tsung-Dao Lee in 2006. He was a young professor at Columbia University when he shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. Credit... Visual China Group, via Getty Images Or Hen: Getting to the core of the matter Helping to build the neutron detector was a gratifying combination of hands-on work and abstract thinking, and from then on, Hen was hooked on experimental nuclear physics. After completing his PhD, and a thesis on short-range correlations, Hen headed to MIT, where he interviewed for a postdoc position as a Pappalardo Fellow in the Laboratory ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech thesis