This module involves experiments covering a range of topics relevant to the Physics undergraduate syllabus in Year 3.

The laboratory work is open ended and less structured so you can demonstrate the skills you’ve developed in Year 1 and Year 2 in preparation for the final year project.

You'll develop advanced measurement, data recording and analysis skills and refine your ability to explain what your findings mean.

Building on what you learned in year 2, this module will extend your understanding of quantum mechanics. We'll introduce operators, expectation values and commutation relationships, and advanced concepts like time independent perturbation theory. In electromagnetism you will exploring the wave like nature of electromagnetism as predicted by Maxwell's equations, Poynting’s theorem, reflection and transmission at a dielectric interface, potentials and gauge transformations, and retarded potentials.

Here you'll cover binding forces in solids, bulk material properties, phonons and other forms of collective excitations, crystal structure, elementary concepts of band structure, semi-conductors, magnetic materials and the origins of magnetism, and superconductors.

This module covers the physics of gases and liquids and the fundamentals of thermodynamics. This includes the ideal gas law, hydrostatics, isothermal and adiabatic processes, and the laws of thermodynamics. We also present the basic principles of statistical mechanics, and various distributions such as Maxwellian, Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein.

This module will develop your knowledge base and transferable skills in preparation for the project undertaken in years 4 and 5 of the course. It focuses on effective and concise communication of complex information through oral, written and graphical presentations, literature and group-work skills.

During this module, you’ll be introduced to the best practises in software development, and the numerical methods that are most commonly used to solve physical problems including linear algebra, partial, ordinary and stochastic differential equations, and Fourier methods.  To undertake this module, a prior understanding of Python is required.

This module focuses on introducing new techniques in mathematical physics. You will develop your problem-solving skills through a series of challenging tutorial problems addressing advanced problems both from the topics addressed in this module and from the other core third year modules including quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermal physics, solid state physics and electrodynamics. You will gain an appreciation for how advanced mathematical techniques can be used to aid in solving challenging physics problems and become proficient in applying the techniques you will learn to solve more advanced and previously unseen problems.

The aim of this module is to help you develop as an enquiring, independent physicist, by undertaking a research project. You'll be under the supervision of a member of staff from the department.

Here you'll track the development of key concepts in solid state physics and how these concepts can be exploited to form functional optical and electronic devices. You will look at the chemistry and physics of crystalline and amorphous materials, with a focus on semiconductor materials, optical activity in solid-state materials, the interaction of semiconductors with light, transistors (bipolar and unipolar), quantum wells and microstructured materials.

This module will provide an overview of modern nanoscience. It will discuss basic physics related to low dimensional nanostructures and nanoclusters, nanofabrication including top-down and bottom up approaches, characteristics techniques including electron spectroscopy and microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, and optical spectroscopy and microscopy. Noble metal nanoparticles, quantum dots, carbon nanomaterials will be introduced. In particular it will cover the physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles, their production, applications in physics, chemistry and medicine along with issues relating to nanotoxicity and the ethics of medical nanoscience.

During this module you'll gain an insight into laser physics, laser optics and nonlinear optics as used in many photonic laboratories. This will include properties of laser radiation, beam propagation and ray transfer matrices, nonlinear polarization, and second and third order nonlinear effects such as second harmonic generation and the optical Kerr effect.

Here you'll learn about modern experimental and theoretical developments in the field of quantum optics and atom optics.

Here you'll be introduced to state-of-the-art developments in generation and use of charged particles in various forms such as free electron beams, plasmas and astrophysical plasmas. This will include basic plasma physics theory (particle orbit theory, fluid equations, ideal and magnetohydrodynamics, wave equations and kinetic theory), electron optics and electron microscopes, free electron devices and radiation sources. You will also look at the history and geography of our galactic environment, red giants, white dwarfs, supernovae, neutron stars, black holes and physics of the Big Bang.

In this module we’ll demonstrate the large-scale structure of space-time. You will develop the necessary mathematical concepts (4-vectors, the metric tensor, covariant derivatives, connection coefficients and the Riemann curvature tensor) and use them to derive Einstein's gravitational field equation and look at idealized cosmological solutions for the large-scale structure of the universe, including the standard model. You will study gravitational collapse and the properties of black holes.

This module extends the laboratory work developed in years 1 and 2 and involves experiments covering a range of topics relevant to the 3rd year Physics UG taught syllabus. The laboratory work is open-ended so you're able to fully explore the experiments in preparation for the final year project. You will develop advanced measurement, data recording and analysis skills and learn how to report experimental outcomes in the form of a journal paper. This module covers 2 experiments.

During this module you will learn about simple systems that exhibit non-linear and complex behaviour. You will find how to analyse non-linear systems and find stationary points, learn to analyse bifurcation diagrams and identify key features on these diagrams, look at periodic solutions to non-linear systems and recognise oscillations, and key features of these oscillations, and understand the origin of deterministic chaos and explain key features relating to chaos. 

This module will provide a broad foundation in concepts and techniques from quantum mechanics, and provide experience in the practical application of these techniques to describing state-of-the-art experiments and quantum technologies. 

This module provides an up-to-date introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC) and the use of modern parallel computers to tackle the most demanding problems in science in general and Physics in particular. It provides an overview of the basic building blocks of High-Performance Computers and how they can be utilised effectively. The practical use of HPC will be demonstrated using application examples drawn from several areas of relevance to 4th year modules offered by the Department.