±¬ÁÏTV

This core module will give you an understanding of the fundamental physical principles, mathematical tools, and laboratory skills you'll use throughout your degree. 

You'll learn about key physical principles, such as Newton's laws, linear and rotational equations of motion, the wave equation, the laws of thermodynamics, and heat transfer. 

You'll also learn about the linear algebra and calculus that underpins these principles, covering differentiation and integration, complex numbers, matrices and differential equations. 

You'll build a strong foundation in laboratory techniques through hands-on experience. You'll learn how to build and use DC circuits and set up experiments to test principles, including kinematic motion, standing and travelling waves, heat engines, and diffraction.

In this core module you'll further develop your knowledge of the fundamental physical principles, mathematical tools and laboratory skills needed for your degree.

You'll explore topics across electricity, magnetism and quantum physics, such as electric potentials and fields, electrical circuits, magnetic fields, the Lorentz force, the photo-electric effect, and the quantum wave function. You'll also learn to describe these phenomena through vector calculus and probability theory.

You'll gain hands-on experience of conducting laboratory work. You'll test various aspects of physical principles, including measuring and mapping electric and magnetic fields, and building and using AC circuits.

In this core module you'll learn foundational skills and techniques that will support your studies as an astrophysicist,  covering essentials such as astronomical observation, positional astronomy, and computing.

You'll learn how to navigate the night sky, plan observations, and use our telescopes. You'll learn how to import and analyse astronomical data in Python, and present these results professionally. You'll also learn how to be effective at self study, conduct and report on research projects ethically, and integrate AI responsibly. 

You'll employ general problem-solving techniques that are routinely used in physics, including dimensional analysis, making approximations, and checking your calculations using order-of-magnitude estimations, limiting behaviour, and symmetry considerations.

Through employability workshops, you'll receive guidance on how to showcase your achievements effectively to help secure projects, placements, and graduate opportunities.

This module will provide you with an understanding of important physical concepts and techniques involved in astrophysics, with an emphasis on how fundamental results can be derived from observations.

You'll apply basic physical principles to astrophysical problems, exploring topics such as solar systems, the properties and evolution of stars and galaxies, as well as the origins and fate of the Universe.

Students will undertake a supervised research project during the whole of the 4th year of an MPhys degree, applying their scientific knowledge to a range of research problems experimental and/or theoretical projects spanning the research expertise of the Department. Along with applying their knowledge, students will manage their project, ensuring that they develop skills in time management, project planning, scientific record keeping, information retrieval and analysis from scientific and other technical information sources.

The module will cover advanced astrophysics topics including observations and theory of star and planet formation, plus the evolution of low, intermediate and high mass stars, close binary evolution and end states (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes) plus astrophysical transients originating from stars (novae, supernovae, gamma ray bursts) and their chemical and mechanical feedback on galaxies.

This module will cover one of the most exciting and fast moving topics in current astrophysics research, the formation and evolution of galaxies, from an observational perspective. Starting with a brief historical introduction, the module will then summarise what we can learn about galaxy evolution from studies of galaxies in the local Universe, before discussing the results obtained from recent deep field observations of the high redshift Universe. The last part of the module will concern the important role that active galactic nuclei play in galaxy evolution. Through a series of 18 lectures students will learn the main types of galaxies together with how we currently understand them to have formed and evolved. A key aspect of the module is how astronomers construct theories of galaxy evolution through observations and computer models, with a particular focus on how astronomers convert measured flux into physical properties such as mass and rates of star formation. The latter third of the module focuses on the growth of supermassive black holes and the role we believe that this has had on the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Einstein's theory of General Relativity is one of the most accurate and successful theories in physics, and stands as one of the foundational pillars of modern physics. In this module you will learn how General Relativity is built up, starting with the Equivalence Principle and how it leads to the fundamental laws of General Relativity, namely the Einstein equations. You will study the solutions to these equations, including Schwartzschild black holes, the Robertson-Walker expanding universe and gravitational waves. You will study aspects of differential geometry, which is the mathematical framework of General Relativity, and encounter objects such as the metric tensor and the Riemann curvature tensor. Finally, you will learn about the two predictions of General Relativity that convinced the world that the theory is, in essence, correct: the bending of light around stars and the anomalous precession of Mercury's orbit.

In this module you will learn how symmetries under rotations, translations, and Lorentz boosts lead to the mathematical structure of the fundamental physical theories of Nature. We will develop the formalism of Lagrangian densities and prove Noether's theorem that links symmetries to physical conservation laws. We introduce Lie theory, which provides an elegant framework for capturing the consequences of symmetries for our physical theories. You will apply this framework to examples that include scalar fields such as the Higgs field, vector fields such as Yang-Mills fields with additional gauge symmetries, and classical Dirac spinor fields. Finally, you will explore the role of symmetry breaking.