Research in Physics

Physics provides excellent opportunities for PhD and MSc research students that arise from working with staff who actively pursue their research interests in modern well equipped laboratories and with state of the art computing hardware. The department has international recognition for excellence in:

Computational Physics

  • Application of Cellular Automata to transport mechanisms in porous media
  • Modelling Atmospheric Behaviour using the Statistical Equilibrium Approach
Electron Scattering from Matter: Experiment and Theory
  • Coherence and exchange phenomena in electron scattering from laser excited caesium atoms
  • Cross sections for modelling the behaviour of metal vapour lasers: electron scattering from gold
  • Resonance phenomena in absolute cross-section measurements of electron scattering from molecules such as NO, CO2 and O2
  • Orbital mapping in strained molecules using high-resolution EMS and density functional theory calculations: the determination of molecular property information
  • Absolute (e, 2e) cross section measurements
  • Absolute cross sections for technologically important molecules and radicals
Surface Physics
  • Atomic, molecular and cluster surface phenomena
  • Adsorption, desorption and reorganisational mechanisms
  • Characterisation of surfaces and interfaces using electron spectroscopies, scanning probe microscopies, surface streaming potential analysis and synchrotron measurements
Nuclear and Particle Theory
  • The study of the relativistic formulation of scattering equations for few body systems based on quantum field theory of mesons and baryons
  • The spectrum of the excited states of the proton as observed in pion scattering and pion photo-production from the proton
  • The importance of the coupled channel formulation of the baryon-baryon system in understanding the properties of doubly strange hypernuclei
  • Modelling the strong interactions of few-hadron systems using the integral equations of relativistic quantum field theory
  • Unified descriptions of strong and electromagnetic interactions of hadrons
Plasma Physics
  • Computational magneto-hydrodynamics
  • Tokamak theory
Process Physics
  • A new modelling of reality, which takes account of the limits of logic discovered by Goedel, shows space, time and quantum behaviour to be emergent and related phenomena.
    See more on Process Physics on Professor Reg Cahill's Process Physics page.