Course overview

BA Physics (3 years) MPhys Physics (4 years) BA Physics & Philosophy (3 years) MPhysPhil Physics & Philosophy (4 years)

Typical intake: 6

Physics is concerned with the study of the universe from the smallest to the largest scale: it is about unravelling its complexities to discover the way it is and how it works.

In the first two years of the course undergraduates will be taught mostly by Physics tutors at Worcester. In the third year of the course tutorials will be given by the College tutors or external specialist tutors. Advanced options in the fourth year are taught in classes provided by the University Physics Department. There will generally be two tutorials or classes each week; during the first year, for example, one will be on physics and one on maths. Undergraduates are generally paired for tutorials; for variety, all the pairs in one year may sometimes be merged and taught as a class. This in-College teaching complements the programme of lectures and practical laboratory sessions provided by the University Physics Department.  In addition to the regular tutorial contact with the tutors, there are opportunities to learn about physics research at first hand through meeting with graduate students studying for research degrees in physics, of whom there are usually about ten in the College.

"A day spent in the labs finishes around 5pm and is very interesting. There are different sections to labs and across the year you'll explore a range of topics including general physics, electronics, computing and optics."
Rob, second-year Physics student

Tutors

Headshot of Richard D'Arcy

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Professor Richard D'Arcy

Headshot of Richard D'Arcy

Professor Richard D’Arcy

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Associate Professor of Particle Accelerator Physics

Education

MA (Durham), MSci PhD (University College London)

Richard is an Associate Professor in Particle Accelerator Physics at the John Adams Institute. His research specialism is the development of novel particle-acceleration techniques, with a particular focus on plasma-wakefield accelerators.

Following undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Durham and University College London, respectively, he moved to Fermilab (USA) as a Research Associate and then DESY (Germany) as a Research Fellow.

At DESY he was Group Leader for Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators as well as Project Coordinator of the FLASHForward experiment for many years. His current research focus is on answering the ‘luminosity question’ of how best to apply plasma accelerators to particle physics and photon science as well as applications in medicine and industry.

Richard welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students with interests in both novel and conventional accelerator research.

Headshot of Robert Smith

Fellow & Tutor in Physics & Tutor for Graduates

Dr Robert Smith

Headshot of Robert Smith

Dr Robert Smith

Fellow & Tutor in Physics & Tutor for Graduates

Associate Professor of Physics

Education

MA MSc PhD (Cambridge)

I am an experimental physicist focusing on using ultracold atomic gases to study many-body quantum phenomena. The first five years of my research career were spent investigating magnetism, superconductivity and quantum phase transitions in a conventional condensed matter setting of the Quantum Matter group at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

Then in 2008, recognising the potential for the study of many body physics, I decided to switch fields to study cold atomic gases in the group of Zoran Hadzibabic. In 2012 I became a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF), also based in Cambridge.

In April 2018 I moved to Oxford and continue to hold my Royal Society URF. I have started a new experimental cold atom group and we are building up an ultracold Erbium experiment to study the effects of long-range dipole-dipole interactions on both equilibrium and non-equilibrium many-body quantum phenomena.

College Lecturer in Physics

Dr Huw Davies

Dr Huw Davies

College Lecturer in Physics

Education

MA, DPhil

Headshot of Milan Krstajic

College Lecturer in Physics

Dr Milan Krstajic

Headshot of Milan Krstajic

Dr Milan Krstajic

College Lecturer in Physics

Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Department of Physics

Education

BA MSci PhD (Cambridge)

I am a PDRA in the Dipolar Quantum Gases group and my research focuses on many-body quantum phenomena in ultracold atomic gases with dipole-dipole interactions. Currently, I am a part of the effort to build a dual-species ultracold atom experiment with erbium and potassium with a goal of exploring roton physics, supersolidity, effects of long-range interactions on phase transitions and impurity and polaron physics.

I have studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where I have earned a BA and MSci and I have recently completed a PhD in Physics also at University of Cambridge.

College Lecturer in Physics

Dr Stefan Zohren

Dr Stefan Zohren

College Lecturer in Physics

Associate Professor of Engineering

Education

BSc, MSc, DPhil

Stefan is an Associate Professor at Engineering Science, Man Group Research Fellow in Financial Machine Learning and former Deputy Director of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Mentor in the FinTech stream at the Creative Destruction Lab at Saïd Business School, all at the University of Oxford. He also works on commercial projects with Man Group, the funding partner of the Oxford-Man Institute, firstly as a Scientific Advisor and later as Principle Quant.

Applying

The College admits about six undergraduates a year to read Physics; this may include one place for Physics and Philosophy. We have no preference between candidates intending to read the three- or the four-year Physics courses, and we welcome candidates from all types of educational background. In recent years we have admitted a high proportion of applicants educated in the state sector. Double Mathematics for those taking A-levels is not a requirement, but the Oxford Physics course has a high mathematical content, and entrants with only single-subject mathematics will cope more easily at the start of the first-year course if they are able to spend some time between A-Levels and arrival in Oxford working through the mathematical material suggested by the tutors.

Read more on the university website Department of Physics