Research
The School of Physics is one of the leading physics institutes in the United Kingdom. The quality of our research is recognised internationally and nationally - in the last assessment by England's Higher Education Funding Council, we were rated at the top end of the scale. We have more than 80 academic and research staff, approximately 110 graduate students and around 30 technical and administrative support staff, creating a diverse and lively atmosphere in an inspiring environment that has played host to two Nobel Prize winners and an impressive array of other world-leading research figures.
The research within the School is divided into seven groups each with a critical mass that ensures a dynamic and stimulating research environment for our students. All research groups are engaged in major international collaborations. The research groups are categorised as follows:
Bristol Physics is internationally recognised in this area and is heavily involved with major international observatories such as the
orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra and Spitzer satellites and the ground based Very Large Array (VLA), Very Large Telescope (VLT),
and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). There are three main areas of research strength. One of these concerns active galaxies
where members of the group played a major role in the discovery of the ubiquity of X-ray jets, the second involves the combination of X-ray
data with other observational data (something pioneered in the group) to address cosmological questions, and the third concerns dwarf and
low-surface brightness galaxies.
The expertise of this young, dynamic group is internationally recognised in the areas of transport and thermodynamic
measurements of highly correlated metals and superconductors in Fermi surface studies using Landau quantisation, angular magnetoresistance
and positron annihilation and in the use of neutron scattering to study the magnetic excitations of solids. The group is a key player in the
exploitation of large facilities, including neutron facilities in the UK and Europe, synchrotron sources in Europe and Japan and high magnetic
field laboratories in Europe and the US. The group has a large suite of high magnetic field cryostats, high quality sample growth and
characterisation equipment and has recently secured funding to construct the world's most sensitive positron annihilation spectrometer.
The award of a Portfolio Partnership from the UK Research Councils in this area reflects the group's excellence both nationally and globally.
The group's strength lies is its strong materials basis, including materials characterisation, growth and fabrication of new materials and
devices, particularly in wide band-gap semiconductors, particularly GaN, ZnO, SiC and diamond, and in the precise measurement of thermal,
optical, and microstructural properties. The group is also strong in the fabrication and characterisation of magnetic structures including
the self-assembly of nano-magnetic materials. The group has a large research income, including a significant proportion from the private sector,
and has recently grown by appointing three new research fellows.
The largest group in the School, the Nanophysics and Soft Matter Group has strong interests in nanoscience, with a large portfolio of
grants and industrial contacts. It has a diverse range of research interests, covering techniques from neutron diffraction to optical
tweezers, and studying systems from novel glasses to living cells and are pioneers of new state-of-the-art instrumentation for the study
of soft and biological materials. Researchers collaborate with other schools within the University (Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics
and Biochemistry, as well as researchers in the Engineering and Medical Sciences faculties) across a broad spectrum of nanoscience and build on our participation in the Interdisciplinary Research .
The Bristol Particle Physics group is one of the oldest in the country and has recently been strengthened by four new academic appointments.
The group has major research activity in two of the key experiments planned on the recently commissioned LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at
CERN: the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and the Large Hadron Collider Beauty experiment (LHCb). The group's existing expertise in high-speed
digital electronics is now complemented by solid-state sensor design and testing experience, resulting in a group that will play a major role
in detector design and development for LHC upgrades, a future linear collider and other future applications.
The Bristol Centre for Quantum Photonics is a world leading group at the forefront of an exciting and rapidly expanding field of physics.
We are concerned with the use of photons to experimentally realise the often counterintuitive and seemingly
paradoxical predictions of quantum physics, and to contribute to the realisation of current and future quantum
photonic technologies. The group has recently received international acclaim for the development of a free
space quantum cryptographic system and for the first demonstration of a quantum C-Not gate on a silicon chip -
a C-Not gate is a universal gate in a quantum computer. We actively collaborate with other leading groups
in Europe, America, Australia and Japan. The group comprises a high calibre team of experts together with talented and enthusiastic postgraduates. We are always interested in hearing from highly
qualified prospective PhD students and postdocs.
Bristol has a very strong tradition in theoretical physics and the current membership of the group contains a number of internationally
leading theorists in condensed matter physics, quantum information, and mathematical physics, all recipients of major international prizes
and awards. Members of the group interact strongly with each other, with experimental groups in the School of Physics, with members of other
schools (Mathematics, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) as well as having strong links with major international
research centres.
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