PhD studentships in the AMOPP group

PhD studentships in the AMOPP group

The AMOPP group hosts a lively and vibrant research community with 17 principal investigators and more than 110 people overall, including PhD students, postdoctoral research associates and support staff. Research within the group spreads across a vast range of areas, such as

• quantum information processing and quantum technologies,
• atomic and molecular cooling and trapping,
• highly excited Rydberg states,
• quantum cavity optomechanics,
• quantum sensing,
• positron and positronium physics,
• ultracold laser spectroscopy and strong laser interactions,
• theoretical physics of molecules and quantum systems,
• astronomical spectroscopy,
• quantum collective dynamics in light-matter systems,
• quantum physics of biomolecular processes,
• macromolecular interactions in biological systems,
• attosecond, strong-field and free-electron-laser interactions of matter with light.

DTP Scholarships

To start in Autumn 2025; application deadline 1pm UK time on Jan 28^th 2025.

We warmly invite competitive applications for scholarships on the following projects, open to home and international candidates with an interest in pursuing research in theoretical physics:

• Attosecond photoelectron holography with non-classical light (Prof. Carla Faria)
• Beyond Born-Oppenheimer: Non-adiabatic effects in accurate nuclear motion calculations of polyatomic molecules (Prof. Sergey Yurchenko)

If you are interested in applying, or for any other query related to these scholarships, please contact the project’s supervisor directly or the AMOPP PhD admission tutor Alessio Serafini.

UCL scholarships

• Research Excellence Scholarship (application deadline: Jan 10^th 2025)

Highly competitive scheme based on academic merit, open to both Home and International students. This scheme may feed into the CSC scholarship.

• Research Opportunity Scholarship (application deadline: Jan 10^th 2025)

Based on academic merit and financial need, open to UK-permanent resident from one of the following BAME ethnic groups: Black or Black British - Caribbean; Black or Black British - African; Other Black background; Asian or Asian British - Bangladeshi; Asian or Asian British - Pakistani.

• UCL Dean’s Prize (application deadline: Jan 15^th 2025)

The Dean’s Prize waivers international fees for students who have won a competitive scholarship. This scheme also subsumes the CSC scholarship, which require such waivers.

Other open scholarships

To start in Autumn 2025;

Additional scholarships are also available for home students to work on the following projects:

Precision spectroscopy of positronium and tests of fundamental physics (Prof David Cassidy; application deadline 17th February 2025)

Cold Chemistry with Rydberg Atoms (Dr Valentina Zhelyazkova; application deadline 31st January 2025)

If you are interested in applying for these opportunities, or have any other query related to these scholarships, please contact the project’s supervisor directly or the AMOPP PhD admission tutor Alessio Serafini.

Entanglement via Gravity: exploring the role of condensed matter systems (Prof Sougato Bose; application deadline 31st January 2025).

A PhD studentship is available in a competitive basis for home (UK) students in the area of ENTANGLEMENT VIA GRAVITY: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF CONDENSED MATTER SYSTEMS, supervised by Sougato Bose in collaboration with experimental partners from condensed matter systems. The work will focus on creating quantum superpositions of a nanocrystal system in two places at once controlled by a qubit and equivalent schemes for nanocantilevers. The protection of such systems from environmental decoherence, as well as their gravitational interactions will be studied in order to evidence the quantum nature of gravity following ideas in papers:

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.180201

If you have any queries about this studentship, please contact Sougato Bose at s.bose@ucl.ac.uk

(the funding is available in competitive basis as a part of a Departmental (3.5-yr, home) PhD studentship for cross-disciplinary initiatives from the Physics and Astronomy Research Strategy Committee with the quality of the candidate being an important criterion).

Please submit applications in the following format:

• A CV, including full details of all University course grades to date.

• Contact details for two academic or professional referees (at least one academic).

• A personal statement (750 words maximum) outlining (i) your suitability for the project as defined above, (ii) what you hope to achieve from the PhD and (iii) your research experience to-date.

Please include a contact telephone number and an email address where you can be easily

reached. References will be taken up for all short-listed candidates.

Please send electronic applications to https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate/apply (search for Route code RRDPHYSAMO01)

Full-time, 2025). Deadline: 31st January. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

How to apply

In order to apply for a PhD position with us, regardless of funding, first contact your prospective supervisor and agree on a research project with them, then submit an application here (choosing the route Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Positron Physics). For general inquiries and any clarification, contact the admission tutor Alessio Serafini.

Seaton award

An award of £1000 has been established in honour of Prof M Seaton FRS, distinguished atomic physicist and former member of the group. This award will assist new students joining the AMOPP group. One recipient will be selected by the group every year on the basis of academic merit and particular circumstances (e.g., students coming from abroad or moving to London).