Physics: Fully Funded PhD Studentship: Precision Tests of Fundamental Symmetry with Trapped Antihydrogen

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship in Physics, based in Swansea University’s College of Science. Swansea University is a UK top 30 institution for research excellence (Research Excellence Framework 2014), and has been named Welsh University of the Year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide.

Project Supervisors:

Supervisor 1: Professor Stefan Eriksson (http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/science/physics/s.j.eriksson/)
Supervisor 2: Professor Niels Madsen (http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/science/physics/n.madsen/)

Start date: January 2018

Project description:

As the most abundant and simplest element, hydrogen has been studied both theoretically and experimentally to great precision, and our best models predict that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created at the birth of the Universe. However, very little antimatter, and no naturally occurring source of antihydrogen can be found today. In an attempt to explain this discrepancy, the ALPHA collaboration, based at CERN, create, hold and test antihydrogen for precision comparison to hydrogen (http://alpha.web.cern.ch).

The successful PhD candidate will be fully integrated into the collaboration at CERN and will have the opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art research on the properties of antihydrogen including precision measurements of the 1S-2S transition energy and tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle.

The student will develop highly specialised skills related to antimatter production, its uses, charged particle storage and manipulation but also highly transferrable skills admired by industry relating to lasers and optics, computer programming, CAD & development, electronics, EM fields, vacuum technology, cryogenics, data and signal analysis. The successful student will also feature as an author on papers regularly published in high profile journals such as Nature.

Eligibility

Candidates must have a first, upper second class honours or a Master’s degree with Merit, in a relevant discipline.

For candidates whose first language is not English, we require IELTS 6.5 (with 6.0 in each component) or equivalent. Please visit our website for a list of acceptable English language tests.

Due to funding restrictions, this studentship is open to UK/EU candidates only.