Particle Physics PhD

The University of Edinburgh

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.

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