Particle Physics Summer Internships for 2025.
Oxford Particle Physics is running a summer internship programme for undergraduate physics students from UK Universities. Priority will be given to students in their second year and above. Students will work with a supervisor in the department, usually a postdoctoral researcher or lecturer, on a self-contained project. Students are encouraged to take part in department life, joining researchers for coffee, discussions and seminars.
The projects run for typically 8 weeks, nominally 1 July through to the end of August. Students will be paid as employees of the University, receiving a payment of at the Oxford living wage (subject to tax and National Insurance deductions). Students are normally expected to work full time on their project, but hours can be discussed with your supervisor.
Eligibility
Unfortunately, due to UK visa regulations, we are only able to accept applications from candidates who do not require a visa to work in the UK. EU students currently in the UK who have been granted Pre-Settled Status are also welcome to apply along with current students in the UK on a Tier 4 visa that allows vacation employment. If you have queries about your personal circumstances, please get in touch with Kim Proudfoot at ppadmin@physics.ox.ac.uk. Please be aware that unfortunately there are no exceptions to these criteria.
How to apply
You should email a one-page-only application, in pdf format, to Kim Proudfoot
(ppadmin@physics.ox.ac.uk) by Monday 7 April 2025. Students should ask for a short academic reference letter to be emailed by the same date. Offers will be made as soon as possible after this date.
On your 1-page application, you should tell us why you are interested in the programme and which project(s) most interest you. Also include your contact details, your year and course, and contact details (including email) of your academic referee. Please also mention any computer programming experience and any previous research experience that you have had. You are welcome to informally contact the supervisor(s) to find out more details about the projects that interest you. For any administrative issues, contact Kim Proudfoot (ppadmin@physics.ox.ac.uk).
Projects
The CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for R&D
Supervisor: Professor Philip Burrows (philip.burrows@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for R&D – has been commissioned and experiments are taking place on the beamline. The intern will have the opportunity to work on simulation studies for operating and upgrading the 220 MeV electron beamline. There are also opportunities for working on simulations of novel beam position monitors and high-gradient radio-frequency accelerating cavities.
Searching for dark matter at the LHC
Supervisors: Professor Alan Barr (alan.barr@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Dr Ben Hodkinson (benjamin.hodkinson@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Dark matter is one of the most prominent puzzles in fundamental physics. The mystery can be solved by various extensions to the Standard Model that introduce new fundamental particles which we would expect to be produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this project you will explore the hints of supersymmetric dark matter that could be present in recent LHC data. You will make use of machine learning methods, statistical techniques and/or particle physics theory to understand which models remain viable and which signals that we may soon be sensitive to. Experience with Python, bash scripting, C++ and machine learning would be advantageous but can be learned as part of the project.
Mu3e Experiment
Supervisors: Dr Richard Plackett (richard.plackett@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Dr Ashley McDougall (ashley.mcdougall@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The Oxford Physics Microstructure Detector (OPMD) group develops new silicon detectors for Particle Physics and Astrophysics experiments. We operate a state of the art 160m2 cleanroom facility in support of this activity. These cutting-edge sensors operate at the core of modern Particle Physics detectors, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, as well as instrumenting telescopes, atom interferometers and other highly demanding projects. As such they are a critical aspect in a large number of the most active fields of research toady.
OPMD is playing a large role in the Mu3e experiment, an upcoming detector based at the high intensity muon beamline at PSI in Switzerland (the Swiss national accelerator complex), that will measure the Standard Model forbidden muon to three electron decay; a strong test of lepton flavour violation. Oxford is responsible for the construction of the Outer Pixel tracking system that measures the momentum of the produced electrons. This challenging, ultra-low mass, detector is entering the construction phase and we are looking for a summer intern to help with this.
This will be a very hands-on project working closely with applied physicists, and technicians in our class 100 (ISO5) cleanroom facility in central Oxford. You will be setting up and performing quality control measurements, testing ultra-thin monolithic silicon detector ASICs, assembling and testing prototype ladder structures, and helping to develop our production routines. This will provide a unique experience with direct contact with cutting edge detector technologies and silicon handling and testing techniques. The Mu3e Outer Pixels Tracker is scheduled to be installed and operated in 2026 so this is a rare opportunity to take part in the construction of an upcoming Particle Physics experiment.
SNO+
Supervisors: Professor Steven Biller (steve.biller@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Professor Jeff Tseng (jeff.tseng@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Professor Armin Reichold (armin.reichold@physics.ox.ac.uk)
SNO+ is a large-scale liquid scintillation detector current operating in Sudbury, Canada. It has a diverse programme of physics, including measuring oscillations of reactor ant-neutrinos, studying geo-antineutrinos, solar neutrinos and supernova neutrinos. With the addition of Tellurium to the detector in 2025, it will also perform a sensitive search for neutrinoless double beta decay. The summer project student will help study event reconstruction and the identification of backgrounds to varisou physics analyses. Some knowledge of programming in C++ and python would be beneficial.
PaMIr+: 2025 Summer placements in interferometry on fast targets
Supervisor: Professor Armin Reichold (armin.reichold@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The PaMIr team is happy to offer a range summer project topics. PaMIr is short for Phase Modulation Interferometry. The PaMIr group is developing and testing a novel method to interferometrically measure rapid displacements with high accuracy and time resolution as well as low latency on a large number of interferometers simultaneously. This summer we expect to test our first commercial prototype in collaboration with our industrial partners. PaMIr+ summer placements will help to extend the PaMIr scope in the following ways:
- To explore the performance of our technique by setting up experiments to compare PaMIr with other precision measurements on our brand new 10m, high speed test stand.
- Analysing PaMIr and reference instrument data with multiple Matlab or C++ or CUDA based algorithms
- Comparing the performance of offline and real-time algorithms.
- To develop novel, high performance data analysis techniques that explore novel offline analysis algorithm which may be performed on GPUs.
- To explore the combination of PaMIr with our own method for absolute distance measurements based on frequency scanning interferometry (FSI).
PaMIr is designed to become a plug-compatible extension to our FSI technology which is now used in its commercial form (Absolute Multiline™) in many scientific projects in accelerator science, particle physics, astrophysics and many industrial settings. Our technology already has applications in many large-scale science experiments. Among them are the alignment of the crab cavities in the upgrade HL-LHC, control of undulators at LCLS-II (Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC), relative positioning of the primary and secondary mirrors of several next generation telescopes (GMT, EELT, KECK), as well as future measurements of deployable space antennae on satellites.The high speed, continuous differential measurements from PaMIr can be used in dynamic control loops to measure rapidly time variable positions continuously over long periods. These are needed in many of the above science problems and in the control of robots and CNC production machines in industry which play a huge role in our societies. The PaMIr collaborates with two industrial partner Etalon. We have enjoyed input from six summer students and two MPhys student to date who have been great contributors to our research.
Work in the PaMIr group requires understanding of second year wave optics, in particular lasers and interferometry. General computer skills are also required for all of the above projects.
Skills useful for all of the above projects are a genuine interest and ideally some experience with programming in Matlab and/or C/C++ as well Git. For the lab work, skills in setting up optics and opto-mechanics will be beneficial. Interested applicants can discuss project options with
Prof Armin Reichold (armin.reichold@physics.ox.ac.uk).
The Higgs boson momentum distribution at the LHC and its sensitivity to new physics
Supervisor: Professor Chris Hays (chris.hays@physics.ox.ac.uk)
At the LHC Higgs bosons are dominantly produced by gluons splitting into a top-quark pair that fuse into a Higgs boson. New high-mass particles could replace the top quark in this process, affecting the momentum distribution of the Higgs boson. This project will use existing codes to calculate the effect on this distribution from new particles in a general effective field theory and in the context of supersymmetry.
SNO+ supernova trigger and background studies
Supervisor: Professor Jeff Tseng (jeff.tseng@physics.ox.ac.uk)
A galactic core-collapse supernova is expected to emit an intense burst of neutrinos which can be detected by SNO+, and the experiment has online systems which are intended to detect such bursts in near real-time, conduct some basic data analysis, and notify the larger multi-messenger astrophysics community via the SNEWS (Supernova Early Warning System) network. The student will refine the criteria by which such bursts are analyzed, and examine non-supernova bursts already recorded to see how to reject them without jeopardizing a genuine supernova signal. The student may also work on the pre-supernova neutrino monitor, and SNEWS real-time analyses, if time permits. The project will mostly involve computing, simulation, and data analysis, and is expected to take 8 weeks.
Instrumentation development to search for dark matter with the DarkSide-20k Experiment
Supervisor: Professor Jocelyn Monroe (jocelyn.monroe@physics.ox.ac.uk)
This project will involve performance qualification of silicon photon sensors employed in the DarkSide-20k experiment. DarkSide-20k searches for dark matter particles, gravitationally bound to our galaxy, interacting in an ultra-sensitive terrestrial detector.
The signature of dark matter interactions in DarkSide-20k is light produced by the argon target. This light signal is detected by novel silicon photon detectors, composed of arrays of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), assembled into photon detection modules.
You will learn to measure the photon detection performance of these cutting-edge silicon detectors, employ calibration techniques and develop data analysis skills.
The project aims are for you to learn new skills in research at the low background frontier of particle physics, to contribute to the delivery of the silicon detector readout system that instruments part of the international DarkSide-20k experiment, currently under construction at the LNGS laboratory in Italy; and to gain experience with working as part of a research team.
Entry requirements
You should have, or be studying, a degree in physics, engineering or computer science; you should have laboratory experience; and, a working knowledge of python would be helpful.
ATLAS Upgrade
Supervisor: Professor Tony Weidberg (tony.weidberg@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The current ATLAS tracking detector needs to be replaced by a more radiation tolerant, higher granularity and faster detector for operation at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). HL-LHC will provide an order of magnitude more integrated luminosity than the current LHC. At Oxford we are heavily involved in the upgrade for the tracker for strip and pixel systems.
This project is on the parts of the strip system that we are producing at Oxford. I would like a summer student to work on analysis of QC/QA data from ATLAS bus tapes and staves. The bus tapes are 1.4 m long copper/polyimide flexible circuits that carry low and high voltage power to the modules. They also have 100 mm track and gap differential pairs to provide the 40 MHz clock and high speed control data to the silicon modules. In addition there are 100 mm track and gap differential pairs for data readout at 640 Mbps. A failure in any line could result in the loss of a module. Therefore very thorough QC/QA is required for the bus tapes. At Oxford we use a custom robot to measure the electrical performance and dimensions of every bus tape received from CERN. CERN also perform some QC on these tapes and we need to do a statistical analysis of the quality of the tapes as well as correlating our data with the data from CERN. We have preliminary results of this analysis from a summer student project last summer and some of these have been published, 2025 JINST 20 C0104.
In Oxford we are also doing the assembly of the carbon fibre staves which provide all the mechanical, electrical and cooling services for the ATLAS modules. We have stringent criteria on the dimensions of these staves and extensive QC data will be acquired. There would be an opportunity for a student to develop analysis code for this data so that we could develop a better understanding of the quality. The most critical issue is the tight specifications for the local flatness over the area of a module. The data is stored on the ATLAS dBase and it would be very interesting to have a statistical analysis of this data to understand the quality and to understand how the distributions compare to the specifications.
The silicon modules on the staves have power hungry chip and the silicon sensors themselves dissipate significant heat after radiation damage. If the thermal impedance from the cooling to the module is too large, the sensor temperature can rise and lead to an increase in the power dissipation which can result in “thermal runaway”. Detailed measurements of the thermal impedance are stored in the ATLAS dBase and this allows for a very interesting statistical analysis of the performance.
In addition to the software activities, a summer student could also get hands on experience with the test systems used, including the custom Bus Tape Testing Robot.
Prospects for Measuring g-2 in the Tau sector at ePIC
Supervisor: Dr Sam Henry (samuel.henry@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Prof Todd Huffman (todd.huffman@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The gyromagnetic ratio of the electron or the muon is predicted to be the number ‘2’ by the Dirac equation. But Quantum field theory corrections indicated that this was not the case. The fact that this is, in fact, true is one of the highest precision validations of Quantum Field theory in physics today. Recently measurements at Fermilab and previously at Brookhaven indicated that the gyromagnetic ratio of the muon was not having as predicted given the numbers and types of particles and fields that we already knew. This holds out the prospect that measurements of the gyromagnetic ratio could be a low-energy window into physics Beyond the Standard Model. Some measurements at the LHC on ATLAS used heavy ion diffractive interactions which produced tau+ tau- pairs to measure the difference from the number ‘2’ for the gyromagnetic ratio. However, these are unpolarized beams. The Electron Ion Collider that will be constructed at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York will collide electrons with protons and ions of several types, and in this case the beams will be polarized. We already have a simulation of tau+ tau- production in the EIC at a very basic level. This simulation needs to be improved, and incorporated in the simulation of the full ePIC detector itself so that we can determine the sensitivity of the ePIC detector to the anomalous gyromagnetic ratio (g-2) in the tau sector. This project involves – confirming the validity of the current simulation at generator level and working with colleagues from Krakow to improve it. The project also involves incorporating that basic simulation into the general ePIC detector simulation in GEANT 4 where a more detailed analysis of the capabilities of this machine for making more precise measurements of g-2 may be possible.
Simulating detector designs for the ePIC
Supervisor: Dr Sam Henry (samuel.henry@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Prof Todd Huffman (todd.huffman@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The ePIC (electron proton / ion collider) experiment is a planned detector to study colliding beams of electrons and protons or heavy ions at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. It will begin operation sometime after 2030. The goal is to study the inner structure of the proton and the interactions of quarks and gluons. Oxford is involved in a critical component, the silicon tracker detector, which will require an innovative design to track the trajectories of particles to high resolution, while keeping the material budget in the inner volume low.
The student will work on the development of simulation software to model the transport of particles through the structure and thus assess the performance of different designs. This may include using machine learning techniques to simplify the complex geometry from CAD files, without reducing simulation accuracy; and investigating the best benchmarks to assess the expected performance for physics studies from hardware designs, and what further improvements might be possible with future technology.
Liquid argon neutrino detector cross section measurement
Supervisor: Prof Morgan Wascko (morgan.wascko@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Why is the universe made of matter and not antimatter? Neutrino oscillations and interactions with matter give hints to this and more big questions in Particle Physics.
The main objective of this project is studying important systematic effects in neutrino oscillation measurements by measuring hadron-argon interaction cross sections using existing data from the ProtoDUNE liquid argon detectors at CERN. These are prototype detectors for the gigantic liquid argon detectors that will be built in the USA for the DUNE project. The Oxford neutrino group plays an important role in DUNE and ProtoDUNE, and you will be able to work within this research group and make a new measurement of hadron-argon scattering. Most of the work will be dine using python, but expertise in that language is not required.
Temperature effects in a plasma-wakefield accelerator
Supervisor: Prof Richard D’Arcy (richard.darcy@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The extreme field gradients inherent to plasma-wakefield accelerators make them an exciting technology for miniaturising particle accelerators. However, to operate them at the luminosities needed for particle physics requires thousands of plasma-acceleration events per second—many orders of magnitude beyond the state of the art. At such high repetition rates the plasma-wakefield process will deposit large amounts of energy in the plasma that is likely to manifest in the form of heat. High temperatures are expected to significantly modify the plasma wake but little is known about how. The intern will have the opportunity to develop temperature diagnostics in a dedicated laser laboratory in Oxford and simulate these effects using particle-in-cell codes, using results from both to investigate this new and unexplored high-temperature regime of plasma accelerators.
Advancing Silicon Detectors for the ATLAS Experiment
Supervisor: Dr Umberto Molinatti (umberto.molinatti@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The Oxford Physics Microstructure Detector (OPMD) group develops state-of-the-art silicon detectors for Particle Physics and Astrophysics experiments. To support this work, we operate a cutting-edge 160m² cleanroom facility.
These advanced sensors are at the heart of modern Particle Physics detectors, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, as well as key components in telescopes, atom interferometers, and other high-precision instrumentation. As such, they play a critical role in some of the most active and pioneering fields of research today.
OPMD is a major contributor to the ATLAS experiment, one of the four flagship experiments at the LHC, designed to probe the depths of the Standard Model and explore physics beyond it. Oxford is responsible for constructing the Inner Tracker Outer Barrel Endcap, in collaboration with other UK institutions. This component will enable precise tracking of particles emerging from high-angle interactions, forming a crucial part of the next-generation detector that will replace the current system at the LHC. As construction progresses, we are seeking a highly motivated summer intern to contribute to this effort.
This is a hands-on opportunity to work closely with applied physicists and technicians in our state-of-the-art ISO5 (Class 100) cleanroom facility in central Oxford. The role will involve key aspects of module quality control, including GUI design, streamlining electrical testing procedures, and programming an automated testing setup to significantly enhance efficiency and accuracy.
This internship offers a rare chance to apply and develop programming skills in the context of one of the largest physics experiments in the world. The ATLAS Inner Tracker is scheduled for installation in 2027, making this a unique opportunity to contribute to a major international experiment with lasting scientific impact. The experience gained will provide a strong technical foundation for future research and could open pathways to further academic opportunities.
Pioneering Next-Generation Detector Technologies
Supervisor: Dr Umberto Molinatti (umberto.molinatti@physics.ox.ac.uk)
The Oxford Physics Microstructure Detector (OPMD) group develops advanced silicon detectors for Particle Physics and Astrophysics experiments. To support this work, we operate a state-of-the-art 160m² cleanroom facility in central Oxford. These cutting-edge sensors are at the core of modern Particle Physics detectors, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and are also key components in telescopes, atom interferometers, and other high-precision instruments. As such, they play a crucial role in some of the most active and pioneering areas of research today.
OPMD is at the forefront of developing and testing novel particle detection technology for applications in particle physics, medical imaging, and photon science. Our work includes 28nm technology, Gallium Arsenide, High Voltage CMOS, and ultra-light chips, all of which push the boundaries of precision, speed, and efficiency in particle detection. These developments are crucial for the next generation of scientific instruments.
This is a hands-on internship working closely with applied physicists and technicians in our ISO5 (Class 100) cleanroom facility. You will gain experience in key aspects of chip characterization, including:
Chip irradiation and its effects
Electrical and thermal characterization
Analyzing static and dynamic responses of chip behavior
Contributing to future detector developments
This internship provides a unique opportunity to work directly with cutting-edge detector technologies and semiconductor characterization techniques. If you are interested in experimental physics, semiconductor technology, or instrumentation, this is a rare chance to gain hands-on experience at the forefront of modern physics.