Study programme

Experimental Physics is a two-year research-oriented Master's programme constituting 120 EC. EC stands for European Credits in which 1 EC equals 28 hours of work.

Year 1: Courses

You will typically follow courses in the first year, constituting lectures and problem-class sessions. During the problem-class sessions, you will work together with fellow students and with the help of teachers and/or teaching assistants. Your performance may be evaluated in different ways, including an individual written exam, hand-in exercises, presentations. The programme is built around three specialised tracks, each focusing on a different area of experimental physics. You will select one track, which determines the main focus of your programme. Most of your courses will be associated with this track but you will complement these with courses from another track to broaden your knowledge.

In the course list below you can find a description of the mandatory and elective courses.

Year 2: Thesis Project

You will do a large thesis project in your second year (55.25 EC), and a small course that teaches you the foundations of open science. As a part of your research training, you will do a literature study to familiarize yourself with the subject and enhance your academic skills by regular attendance of various seminar. The project concludes with a written thesis and an oral presentation.

There are many possible thesis subjects. Projects may be carried out in the start-of-the-art labs of Utrecht University and/or in collaboration with external institutes, such as CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, the Nikhef institute in Amsterdam, or the AMOLF institute in Amsterdam. Depending on your preferences, your project may involve significant hands-on experimental or computational work, focus entirely on data analysis and modelling, or anything in between.

Examples of recent project titles

• Signatures of temporary charge carrier trapping by single quantum dot spectroscopy and spectroelectrochemistry.
• The properties and applications of DNA with bio-DBCO attachment in single molecule magnetic tweezers measurements.
• Accelerating trigger performance of the ALICE detector using FPGA-based neural networks.
• Spin-dependent off-axis holography: a window into spinor Bose-Einstein condensates dynamics.
• Self-assembly of colloidal nanorods inside polygonal prisms.
• Exploring open charmed hadron production in heavy-ion collisions within the Trajectum theoretical framework.