university of melbourne phd physics

Astrophysics

The phd program (phd in physics), the doctorate program (phd physics):.

The approximately 3 and a half year PhD in Physics program is based purely on research. There are no required subjects. Key milestones in the program are: (1) Candidacy: There is a progress review at the end of your first year. This consists of a presentation, short report, and a Q&A session with the candidacy committee (composed of three to four faculty members). If you are on-track, you become a PhD candidate. (2) Annual reviews: There continue to be annual reviews of your progress and any issues that have arisen with your candidacy committee each year, (3) Thesis: At the end of your PhD program, you submit a thesis documenting your PhD research that is reviewed by an international panel of experts in your field.

Choosing a research project and supervisor:  Before submitting a PhD application, you must liaise with your planned supervisor about your planned PhD project. In most cases, this is your MSc supervisor, but there are exceptions if you are coming from a different institution or decide to change your research focus.  We have listed (very!) brief project ideas for each research area under the Research link. If you are interested in an area and would like to know more, please contact the faculty member directly.

If you are applying internationally, the first step in applying for the PhD program is to send your CV, transcripts, evidence of English proficiency (if required), and an indication of your research interests to [email protected] . They will suggest some potential supervisors. No one is admitted to the PhD program without a supervisor.

Funding: All of our PhD students receive a stipend sufficient to support them over the course of their PhD. This also comes with a tuition fee waiver. There can be supplementary scholarships and awards on top of this, and (with permission of their PhD supervisor), PhD students often supplement their income while developing their teaching abilities by acting as tutors in undergraduate or graduate subjects.

• Getting here
• Using Asteroseismology to Measure an Integrated Mass Loss for Evolved Stars in Globular Clusters Wednesday 14 Sep 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Level 6 Geoff Opat([...]
• Understanding X-Ray Signatures of Outflows Through 3-D Simulations Wednesday 07 Sep 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Level 6 Geoff Opat([...]
• Orbital structures of SAMI passive galaxies from orbit-superposition Schwarzschild models. Wednesday 31 Aug 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Laby Theatre(+Zoom)[...]
• On Modelling Complex Systems in Astronomy Wednesday 17 Aug 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Laby Theatre(+Zoom)[...]
• Hydroxyl as a Probe of the Interstellar Medium Wednesday 10 Aug 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Zoom Dr Anita Petzl[...]
• How do galaxies regulate their own star formation? Wednesday 03 Aug 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Laby Theatre(+Zoom)[...]
• Leaks and bursts Wednesday 27 Jul 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Laby Theatre(+Zoom)[...]
• Research Overview
• Epoch of Reionisation
• Inflation and the Early Universe
• Galaxy Formation and Evolution
• Gravitational Lensing
• Dark Energy
• Extreme Objects
• Gravitational Waves
• Dark Sky Studies
• News and Events
• Ask an Astrophysicist
• Introduction to Life, Earth, and Universe

Research degrees

Quick links.

Explore our graduate research degrees and the supervisors, infrastructure, supports and services available.

Scholarships

Explore our scholarship opportunities that recognise talent and support graduate researchers.

Find a supervisor

Find the right supervisor for you and learn how they can support your research.

How to apply

Start your research journey by applying for graduate research as a domestic or international candidate.

Why research with us

Join Australia’s leading research university, pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

Discover research at Melbourne

Your research options

Discover the types of graduate research we offer, including the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and masters by research.

Explore our research areas – from arts, humanities and social sciences to veterinary, agricultural and food sciences and learn more about your opportunities  as a graduate researcher, including interdisciplinary and international experiences.

Explore your options

Your study experience

Discover what life is like as a researcher at Melbourne, including learning on campus, living in Melbourne, and the facilities and services available to you.

Life as a researcher

Support for Indigenous researchers

We encourage and support our Indigenous graduate researchers. Find out about the services and opportunities available to Indigenous applicants and join a close-knit Indigenous research community that shares your culture, challenges and knowledge.

Where could your degree take you?

Engage with industry.

Find out how our graduate researchers can engage with industry.

Entrepreneurial programs

Access a range of entrepreneurial opportunities through the Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre (MEC).

Commercialising your research

Understanding intellectual property and copyright can be challenging. We're here to help you manage these aspects of your research.

Interdisciplinary research

Challenging current thinking and translating knowledge through unexpected connections.

Banner image: Getty Images

About – Atomic, Optical and Nanophotonic Physics

The OPTICAL PHYSICS research group has expertise in experimental and theoretical aspects of optical physics, atom optics, atomic & solid-state physics, and x-ray optics & physics. We are developing new tools for investigating atomic scattering of x-rays, including precise measurements and novel theory. Our work with lasers and atoms investigates the complexity of the light-interaction, and exploits advantages offered by atom optics in comparison to photon optics. We are also interested in the fundamental study of the interaction of light with fabricated nanoscale structures.

Theoretical Particle Physics

School of Physics

What are the fundamental constituents of the universe and the laws that govern them?

These are the big questions that the theoretical particle physics group are trying to answer. We have diverse research interests that range from astroparticle and cosmological physics that describe the physics of the early universe, to the physics of the Standard Model and beyond that describes the fundamental interactions and matter of the subnuclear world. Group members have played a major role in exploring neutrino physics and the identity of dark matter. Research areas of the Standard Model include the physics of the famed Higgs boson and elucidating why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe. We also explore frontiers Beyond the Standard Model such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions, and how they may be discovered experimentally.

These are exciting times for particle physics as we are in the middle of the era of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN. The LHC has already discovered the Higgs boson; what it finds next could provide the answers to some of the most fundamental questions regarding the quantum Universe.

Professor Nicole Bell

Associate Professor Matthew Dolan

Professor Raymond Volkas

Research fellows

Dr peter cox.

Dr Avirup Ghosh

Dr Stephan Meighen-Berger

Dr Jayden Newstead

PhD students

Msc students, emeritus staff.

• Ivan Esteban (Basque U.) 4:00pm May 8, 2024: TBA
• Felix Yu (JGU Mainz) 4:00pm May 22, 2024: TBA
• Maximilian Ruhdorfer (Cornell) 10:00am Apr 24, 2024: Instanton NDA for Axion Models
• Anna Suliga (UC Berkeley) 10:00am Apr 17, 2024: Strategies for detecting low-energy neutrino fluxes
• William DeRocco (UC Santa Cruz) 1:00pm Mar 25, 2024: Exploring the dark side with high-cadence microlensing
• Gustavo Marques-Tavares (Maryland) 10:00am Mar 13, 2024: SPartAcous: a new interacting dark sector model faces cosmological tensions
• Junichiro Kawamura (IBS Korea) 2:00pm Feb 15, 2024: Finite modular symmetry for flavor hierarchies and strong CP
• Zara Bagdasarian (UC Berkeley) 11:00am Dec 8, 2023: Solar neutrinos overview and advances towards Theia multipurpose neutrino detector
• Yen-Hsun Lin (Academia Sinica) 11:00am Oct 18, 2023: Signatures of afterglows from light dark matter boosted by supernova neutrinos in large underground detectors
• Tracy Slatyer (MIT) 2:00pm Sep 14, 2023: Dark Matter, Cosmic Background Radiation, and the Birth of the First Stars
• Joachim Brod (U. Cincinnati) 10:00am Aug 30, 2023: Two new precision observables in kaon physics
• John Gargalionis (IFIC, Valencia) 2:00pm Aug 25, 2023: Proton decay in low-scale Pati–Salam models
• Robert Mostoghiu (Swinburne) 3:30pm Aug 2, 2023: Cosmological simulations and the search for dark matter
• Venus Keus (DIAS) 2:00pm Jul 28, 2023: CP-violation in the dark sector
• Ben Allanach (Cambridge) 2:00pm Jul 24, 2023: Floccinaucinihilipilification
• Claudia Hagedorn (IFIC, Valencia) 2:00pm July 14, 2023: Phenomenology of low-scale seesaw with flavour and CP symmetries
• Rick S. Gupta (Tata Institute) 3:30pm 24 May, 2023: Cosmological selection of the weak scale
• Ellen Sirks (U. Sydney) 3:30pm May 3, 2023: Galaxy clusters: giant dark matter particle colliders
• Natalia Tapia (Utah U.) 10:00am Apr 12, 2023: Searching for new gamma ray signals from cosmic ray scattering on axionlike particles
• Dipan Sengupta (U. Adelaide) 3:30pm Mar 29, 2023: Unitarizing scattering amplitudes in theories of compact Extra Dimensions
• Cristina Mondino (Perimeter Institute) 10:00am Mar 15, 2023: Dark photon superradiance: Electrodynamics and multimessenger signals
• Stefano Profumo (UC Santa Cruz) 10:00am Mar 1, 2023: The Primordial Black Holes Variations
• Marta Losada (NYU Abu Dhabi) 11:00am Feb 24, 2023: Higgs physics, EDMs and Baryogenesis
• Michael Klasen (U. Münster) 11:00am Dec 22, 2022: Supersymmetric dark matter after Fermilab's (g-2) μ measurement
• Flip Tanedo (UC Riverside) 10:00am Oct 26, 2022: Adventures in a Warped Dark Sector
• Kimberly Boddy (U. Texas) 10:00am Oct 12, 2022: Searching for Dark Matter Interactions in Cosmology
• Matthew McCullough (CERN) 4:00pm 28 Sep, 2022: The Higgs Boson Under a Microscope
• Seyda Ipek (Carleton) 10:00am Sep 14, 2022: QCD and Baryogenesis
• Filippo Sala (LPTHE) 4:00pm Aug 31, 2022: Heavy Dark Matter from Phase Transitions
• Graham White (IPMU) 3:30pm July 6, 2022: Archaeology on the origin of matter
• Kyohei Mukaida (KEK) 3:30pm May 11, 2022: Leptoflavorgenesis
• Kohei Kamada (RESCEU, U. Tokyo) 3:30pm Apr 27, 2022: Magnetogenesis, Baryogenesis, and Wash-in Leptogenesis in Pseudoscalar Inflation
• Michael Nee (Oxford) 2:00pm Apr 26, 2022: The Boring Monopole
• Vera Gluscevic (UCLA) 10:00am Apr 13, 2022: Probing dark matter mass and interactions: from the early universe to near-field cosmology
• Benjamin Roberts (U. of Queensland) 3:30pm Mar 30, 2022: Dark matter induced atomic ionisation
• Alexander Millar (Stockholm) 2:00pm Feb 25, 2022: Axion-photon conversion in neutron star magnetospheres
• Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney) 4:00pm Oct 27, 2021: Venturing into the neutrino fog
• Volodymyr Takhistov (IPMU) 4:00pm Oct 13, 2021: Exploring Depths of the Dark: Neutrinos, Axion Explosions and Multiverse Black Holes
• Zahra Tabrizi (Virginia Tech) 10:00am Sep 29, 2021: EFT Constraints from Neutrino Experiments
• George Zahariade (IFAE) 4:00pm Sep 15, 2021: Quantum Mechanics of Gravitational Waves
• Nicholas Rodd (UC Berkeley) 3:30pm Sep 1, 2021: New ideas for the axion dark matter program
• Hank Lamm (Fermilab) 11:00am June 9, 2021: The Long Story Short: Quantum Simulations for High Energy Physics
• Rupert Coy (ULB) 3:30pm May 26, 2021: The domain of thermal dark matter candidates
• Kai Schmitz (CERN) 4:00pm May 12, 2021: NANOGrav and Cosmic Strings from Cosmological B-L Breaking
• Konstantin Springmann (TUM) 4:00pm April 21, 2021: Axions in dense objects
• Joshua Eby (Kavli IPMU) 3:30pm March 17, 2021: Axion Stars: Towards the Planck Scale
• Tongyan Lin (UCSD) 11am March 3, 2021: Dark matter scattering in dielectrics
• Ariel Rock (Wisconsin–Madison) 1.15pm December 9, 2020: Unconventional Taste: Flavor via Unexpected Origins
• Clara Hormigos-Feliu (TU Dortmund) 5pm November 25, 2020: Asymptotically safe models with Higgs and flavor portals

Organisers: Stephan Meighen-Berger ( [email protected] ) Jayden Newstead ( [email protected] )

Home page of  Prof David N. Jamieson

Galileo's invention of the astronomical telescope: the discovery of moons, stars and a new planet, does e=mc2 apply to chemistry, materials research society fall meeting 2012 - symposium g.

Raymond Volkas

Contact raymond, primary interest, theoretical particle physics, raymond's short profile.

Personalise your experience

Major overview.

Available in these courses

Are you interested in how a bumblebee flies, how a quantum computer works or how to build a wind turbine that doesn’t fall down?

If you’re inspired by the beauty of the cosmos and want to reveal its mysteries or use the biggest machine ever built to examine the smallest particles ever observed, Physics is for you.

You’ll learn to think critically about the world and how it works through studying matter and energy, and their interactions. At a fundamental level, biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine and even finance can all be explained by physics.

Biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine – at its most fundamental level, everything in nature can be explained by physics.

Related study areas