A DPhil studentship in pure mathematics to begin in 2025, funded by Professor Francis Brown's ERC Synergy Grant project 'MaScAmp: Mathematics of Scattering Amplitudes'.
The funding will cover 4 years of stipend. The Department will cover the fee element for 1 home or 1 Overseas student. The stipend would be offered at the standard UKRI rate.
Interested candidates with a background in algebraic/differential geometry, number theory, or quantum field theory, are welcome to apply. Possible research topics cover a broad range of subjects including the theory of periods, the geometry of arithmetic groups, abelian varieties, modular forms, with potential applications to high-energy physics. The candidate will be part of the wider MaScamp team and will be encouraged to participate in regular exchanges among the host institutions.
The goal of MaScAmp is a new framework for fundamental interactions in physics in the form of a unified mathematical approach to scattering amplitudes. By applying methods from number theory, algebraic geometry and string theory to Feynman integrals, the team aims to pinpoint universal principles of quantum field theory, gravity and string theory and to develop publicly available software for high-precision computations relevant to particle-collider and gravitational-wave observables. The principal investigators and host institutions are Ruth Britto (Trinity College Dublin), Francis Brown (University of Oxford), Axel Kleinschmidt (MPI for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam) and Oliver Schlotterer (Uppsala University). We plan to recruit ambitious PhD students with a strong academic background in mathematical physics who are excited about multidisciplinary research in the fields related to MaScAmp.