Positron experiments |
Work on measuring positron scattering from atomic and molecular targets. Learn how to operate a unique experimental apparatus and analyse data for interactions between matter and antimatter. |
Assoc Prof James Sullivan |
Cross sections for nuclear fusion |
Proton-boron fusion has the potential to deliver limitless clean energy. This project will aim to understand the physics underpinning this important nuclear reaction.
Background in computational physics, data analysis, and nuclear physics is required.
|
Dr Edward Simpson |
Time dependence of nuclear fusion |
The project will involve writing high-performance computer code to simulate nuclear fusion using time-dependent coupled channel models.
Background in computational physics, data analysis, and nuclear physics is required.
|
Dr Edward Simpson |
Radioactivity in the environment |
This project will use state-of-the-art chemistry techniques to assess uranium and plutonium fallout from nuclear weapons tests in a range of samples. |
Dr Michaela Froehlich |
Applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) |
Projects in AMS applications and methodology using the highest energy AMS Tandem accelerator system in the world. Current applications include radioactivity in traditional foods, exposure age dating, astrophysics, hydrology, and environmental studies. |
Assoc Prof Steve Tims, Dr Michaela Froehlich, Dr Stefan Pavetich, Dr Zuzana Slavkovska, and Prof Keith Fifield |
Directional Dark Matter Measurements with CYGNUS * |
Our group at the ANU hosts Australia's CYGNUS prototype detector, CYGNUS-1. A number of experimental and computational projects are available for students with an interest in this area.
Note: PhD candidates will only be considered if they have the requisite skills.
|
Dr Lindsey Bignell, Dr Zuzana Slavkovska, Dr Peter McNamara and Prof Greg Lane |
The SABRE Dark Matter Experiment * |
SABRE is an Australian dark matter experiment due to come online in 2023. Software development and computational/analysis studies are available.
Note: PhD candidates will only be considered if they have the requisite skills.
|
Dr Lindsey Bignell, Dr Zuzana Slavkovska, Dr Peter McNamara and Prof Greg Lane |
Experimental nuclear structure *
|
Fundamental and applied aspects of nuclear science at Australia's Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility. Projects use gamma-ray, electron and particle spectroscopy techniques to study atomic nuclei across a range of physics themes, including studies of the structure and shapes of atomic nuclei, nuclear lifetime measurements by direct timing and Doppler-shift methods, and magnetic moment measurement by hyperfine interaction techniques.
Note: PhD candidates will only be considered if they have engaged in related nuclear physics research at any partner institution.
|
Dr AJ Mitchell, Prof Greg Lane, Assoc Prof Tibor Kibedi, and Prof Andrew Stuchbery
|
Understanding energy dissipation in colliding quantum many-body systems
|
The development, characterisation and optimisation of a new gas ionization detector system, with the aim to use this new system, and our 15 million Volt heavy ion accelerator, make precision measurements of the earliest stages of energy dissipation through the measurement of multi-nucleon transfer reactions, identifying the mass, charge and kinetic energies of nuclear reaction products.
|
Dr Kaitlin Cook, Prof Mahananda Dasgupta, and Prof David Hinde
|
Probing room-temperature quantum fluids * ^ |
The project aims to explore room-temperature Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) made of hybrid light-matter particles, called exciton polaritons. These atypical BECs, which are inherently non-equilibrium due to its driven-dissipative nature, are largely unexplored at room temperature where thermal excitations are excitations are expected to play a dominant role compared to cryogenic conditions.
Background in optics, data analysis using matlab, python, or related scientific programming tools is required.
Note: PhD candidates will only be considered if they have the requisite skills.
This research project can be extended, and supported with additional funding, beyond the standard duration (12 weeks) of the FRT program. This possibility and duration of extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis and discussed with the shortlisted candidate during the selection process.
|
Dr Eli Estrecho and Prof Elena Ostrovskaya |
Quantum photonics with nanostructued metasurfaces |
Development of nanostructured optical metasurfaces for generation, transformation, and imaging of multi-photon quantum states.
Background in quantum optics and/or nanophotonics is desirable.
|
Prof Andrey Sukhorukov |
Next generation compound semiconductor optoelectronic devices |
Our research focuses on incorporating nanostructures into the next generation optoelectronic and photonic devices such as lasers, LEDs, photodetectors, sensors and solar cells. Applications for these devices are for holographic displays, LiDAR systems, Li-Fi, augmented reality, quantum communications, remote sensing and wearable sensors. |
Prof Hoe Tan, Prof Lan Fu and Prof Chennupati Jagadish |
Tunable dielectric meta-surfaces and their applications |
Calculation and optimisation of metasurface design for tunability with small stimulus and fast response.
|
Prof Dragomir Neshev |
Wearable sensors for personalized health care technologies and solutions |
This is a multidisciplinary project aiming at developing wearable/portable sensors for detecting target biomarkers to identify certain health conditions. |
Dr Buddini Karawdeniya, Prof Dragomir Neshev, and Prof Lan Fu |
Experimental quantum simulation with ultracold metastable Helium atoms in an optical lattice ^ |
This project will construct a 3D optical lattice apparatus for ultracold metastable Helium atoms, which will form an experimental quantum simulator to investigate quantum many-body physics. A range of experiments will be performed such as studying higher-order quantum correlations across the superfluid to Mott insulator phase transition.
This research project can be extended, and supported with additional funding, beyond the standard duration (12 weeks) of the FRT program. This possibility and duration of extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis and discussed with the shortlisted candidate during the selection process.
|
Dr Sean Hodgman and Prof Andrew Truscott |
Mass-entangled ultracold helium atoms ^ |
This experimental project aims to create entangled states of ultracold helium atoms where the entanglement is between atoms of different masses. By manipulating the entangled pairs using laser-induced Bragg transitions and measuring the resulting correlations, we will study how gravity affects mass-entangled particles.
This research project can be extended, and supported with additional funding, beyond the standard duration (12 weeks) of the FRT program. This possibility and duration of extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis and discussed with the shortlisted candidate during the selection process.
|
Dr Sean Hodgman and Prof Andrew Truscott |
Interactions between antimatter and ultracold atoms ^ |
Antiparticles and antimatter have progressed from theory and science fiction to become an important and exciting area of pure and applied science. This fundamental atomic physics project will investigate how antimatter and matter interact by experimentally studying the interaction of positrons (the electron anti-particle) with trapped ultracold rubidium atoms.
This research project can be extended, and supported with additional funding, beyond the standard duration (12 weeks) of the FRT program. This possibility and duration of extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis and discussed with the shortlisted candidate during the selection process.
|
Dr Sean Hodgman and Prof Andrew Truscott |
Solid-state nanopore biosensors |
Sensing of proteins by combining single-molecule solid-state nanopore analytics and machine learning.
Interest in interdisciplinary research at the interface of physics, chemistry and biology is desirable.
This research project can be extended, and supported with additional funding, beyond the standard duration (12 weeks) of the FRT program. This possibility and duration of extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis and discussed with the shortlisted candidate during the selection process.
|
Prof Patrick Kluth and Mr Shankar Dutt |
High harmonics generation in nanostructured solids |
The project aims to develop novel approaches to generate high harmonics – source of light with extremely short wavelengths in vacuum-ultraviolet and extreme-ultraviolet ranges. Currently, such sources are large and expensive. However our recent research suggests practical all-solid-state sources are feasible to develop with the concepts of nanoresonators and metasurfaces. Such sources would increase the resolution of optical microscopy and metrology. Conventional optics can study objects with sizes down to about ten-millionth of a metre, which is limited by the wavelength light sources. However contemporary nanotechnology research and industries create a demand for optical diagnostics of much smaller objects – down to one billionth of a metre. We aim to meet this demand with new ultra-short wavelength light sources based on high harmonic generation in nanostructured solids.
Researchers joining the project can be involved in one or more of the following lines of investigation:
(1) Supercomputer simulations of the process at the atomic level.
(2) Computations based on classical electrodynamics;
(3) Clean-room nanofabrication of samples;
(4) Optical experiments with nanostructured samples
|
Dr Sergey Kruk |
Power generation for wearable devices |
This project will focus on the cutting-edge power generation approaches. Based on application scenarios in healthcare, industrial inspection, structural monitoring, armed forces consumer electronics, etc., a system architecture of the wearable flexible system is to be designed and tested. |
Prof Larry Lu |
Atomically thin optoelectronic devices (LED, solar cells) and/or mechanical devices based on novel two-dimensional nano-materials |
This project aims to demonstrate novel optoelectronic devices, like light-emitting diodes (LED), solar cells, etc. These 2D nano-materials can also be integrated into nano-electro-mechanical systems, enabling ultra-sensitive mechanical mass sensors, with single molecule or even single atom sensitivities. Moreover, the mechanical resonators based on these 2D nano-materials would be a perfect platform to investigate quantum mechanics, opto-mechanics, material internal friction force, nonlinear physics, etc. |
Prof Larry Lu |
Quantum emitters in 2D materials |
Quantum emission has been reported from a diversity of materials, in semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and insulating hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The large band gap of the latter even allows one to resolve the zero phonon line (ZPL) at room temperature and thwarts non-radiative recombination of the localized exciton. Thus, single-photon emitters in hBN have an intrinsically high quantum efficiency which leads to significantly brighter emission. |
Prof Larry Lu |
MEMS/NEMS based novel biomedical devices |
Compared with other methods, nano-electro-mechanical system (NEMS) based bio-sensors are promising in clinical diagnostics because of their extremely high mass sensitivity, fast response time and the capability of integration on a chip. We have demonstrated a low-concentration DNA (atto-molar sensitivity) optically interrogated ultrasonic mechanical mass sensor, which has an ordered nanowire (NW) array on top of a bilayer membrane. This method represents a mass-based platform technology that can sense molecules at low concentrations, which could be useful for early-stage disease detection. |
Prof Larry Lu |
Optical nonlinearities in 2D crystals |
Highly nonlinear 2D materials can in principle be used for spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). SPDC is a well-developed tool in quantum optics to produce entangled photons. So far, this process has exclusively been observed at the macroscopic scale on periodically poled bulk crystals. This project aims to investigate enhancement techniques to bring SPDC to the atomic scale and use nonlinear 2D crystals as integrated highly entangled photon sources. |
Prof Larry Lu |
Space Robots with enhanced Proximity Capability |
Shape-Shifting Robots, Active Debris Removal, Transient Behavior of Extendible Space Structure, etc. |
Prof Junichiro Kawaguchi |
Design of terahertz communication strategies for 6G and beyond era |
As a highly promising technology to support ultra-fast connectivity in the 6G and beyond era, terahertz (THz) communications (0.1-10 THz) have recently attracted rapidly growing attention from academia and industry. In this project, the student aims to design new communication strategies and signal processing algorithms for enabling intelligent THz communications for wireless systems in the 2030s.
Undergraduate applicants are expected to have
(i) solid background in communications and signal processing,
(ii) high-level programming skills (such as the ability to write numerical simulation programs in MATLAB or equivalent and/or machine learning programs in Python or equivalent),
(iii) high motivation and good self-study capabilities,
(iv) excellent written and verbal communication skills, and (v) good interpersonal skills.
Additional note: All eligible Indian institutions where the candidates meet the following expertise expectations:
(i) solid background in communications and signal processing,
(ii) high level programming skills (such as MATLAB and/or Python), and
(iii) excellent publication record (such as first-authored publications in IEEE journals/letters).
|
Assoc Prof Nan Yang, Prof Salman Durrani, and Assoc Prof Xiangyun (Sean) Zhou |
How do extreme events impact river water quality? ^ |
Extreme events (e.g., bushfires, floods and droughts) can influence the source and transportation of pollutants, posing substantial risks to water security. This research aims to understand how water quality responds to extreme events, and how these responses vary by catchment conditions. The study will generate important management implications to sustain the supply of clean water under a changing climate.
The research project duration can be extended - subject to approval.
Candidate must meet the following requirements:
1. Background in a relevant field (environmental science or environmental engineering) and demonstrated relevant experience in a research or research support role in a related discipline and an interest in a field closely related to allocated research activities.
2. Sound knowledge of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Experience in managing and analysis of high-volume research data may be regarded positively.
3. Demonstrated effective interpersonal skills and verbal and written communication skills.
4. Proven organisational skills and attention to detail, with a demonstrated ability to prioritise own workload and to work effectively both independently and as part of a team.
5. Demonstrated experience using information systems, including the ability to generate complex reports and demonstrated skills using the MS Office suite, in particular Excel.
6. Programming experiences (e.g., R, Python) are preferred.
For the suitable candidate, the duration of this project can be extended to a total period of up to 6 months, supported by additional funding for extended living costs beyond the standard duration of the FRT program.
|
Dr Danlu Guo |
Synthesis and Study of Functional Catalysts * ^ |
Design and create functional catalysts through commercially viable methods for electrochemical reactions.
Backgrounds in materials science and chemistry are required.
For the suitable candidate, the duration of this project can be extended to a total period of up to 6 months, supported by additional funding for extended living costs beyond the standard duration of the FRT program.
|
Dr Doudou Zhang and Assoc Prof Siva Karuturi |