Course summary

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2024). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas. The DPhil in Particle Physics is a research-based course of three to four years in duration. 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 course is hosted by the Particle Physics sub-department, one of six sub-departments of the Department of Physics. 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 work of this world-class sub-department is in experimental particle physics, particle astrophysics and accelerator physics. As a DPhil student, you will join an existing research group which typically consists of academics, postdocs, fellows and current students. Your research work begins on day one and will be underpinned by a taught graduate course in the first year that runs in parallel. You will also have the opportunity to follow courses taught at other departments across the Maths, Physics and Life Sciences division. 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 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. 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 and 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).