Physics Distance Learning CERN (Research)

This PhD requires a presence in Geneva, Switzerland and involves working at the ALPHA experiment site. The ALPHA experiment is part of Swansea University’s partnership with CERN – part of the world-leading ALPHA Antihydrogen collaboration.

Supervision of this program will be conducted at CERN, Geneva by Prof. Niels Madsen, Dr. Aled Isaac, Prof. Dirk van Der Dirf and Prof. Stefan Eriksson.

Swansea University is involved in the Antihydrogen project called ALPHA and has been active at CERN since 1999, first in the pioneering ATHENA experiment that made the first low-energy antihydrogen in 2002 and since 2005 in the ALPHA experiment that Swansea co-founded with a number of other partner institutions.

Within the ALPHA collaboration work at CERN, the Swansea team leads a number of aspects such as e.g. positron accumulation, transfer and preparation, antihydrogen synthesis and trapping, high precision laser spectroscopy, Beryllium laser-cooling and hyperfine spectroscopy for magnetometry and improved antihydrogen trapping.

Swansea is the only university in Wales that is active at CERN and is only involved in the ALPHA experiment. However, unlike most university-sized experiments, the ALPHA experiment is a larger undertaking, involving 11 institutions and many diverse branches of physics. The team working on ALPHA needs to be working on cryogenics, ultra-high vacuum techniques, super-conducting magnets, advanced particle detectors, lasers, atomic physics, plasma physics and particle physics, and of course develop both the control systems and electronics to make it all work together.

From September 2027, the Physics Department will be based at the Bay Campus, where all Physics programmes will be taught, benefitting from our advanced research laboratories and state-of-the-art facilities.