Physics, Ph.D. Distance Learning CERN

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.

English Language IELTS 6.5 Overall (with no individual component below 6.0) or Swansea University recognised equivalent. Full details of our English Language policy, including certificate time validity, can be found here.

International students: £24,550 per year

UK students: £5,006 per year

Jul 2026

Rolling admissions – apply as early as possible

• Singleton Park Campus, United Kingdom