The ETAP groups offer students a great variety of Bachelor, Master and PhD thesis topics in the fields of high energy particle, detector and neutrino physics and dark matter searches. Typical theses topics are experimental and phenomenological data analysis using software, electronics and hardware developments for detectors as well as FPGA programming. Large data analyses are typically performed on the Mogon computer cluster of the University of Mainz or the Grid.Below you will find a list of of topics and the corresponding contact person(s). Feel free to browse our website or contact us for more information, detailed proposal of a topic and suggestions.
Current offers
PhD Positions in Dark Matter Search with XENON and Detector R&D towards DARWIN
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Junior Faculty Position
Postdoctoral Fellow IAXO
Neutrino Physics at Accelerators & Reactors
- Developing new scintillator detectors and prototypes for the DUNE experiment
- Studying neutrino oscillations at accelerators (DUNE, T2K, and others)
- Searching for sterile neutrinos with SoLid and accelerator experiments at Fermilab
High energy and detector R&D with the ATLAS experiment at LHC
- Higgs-Physics (Dr. Christian Schmitt, Dr. Duc Bao Ta)
- Searches for Dark Matter (Dr. Duc Bao Ta)
- Searches for Supersymmetry and new particles (Prof. Dr. Stefan Tapprogge)
- Standard Model precision measurements (Prof. Dr. Matthias Schott, Prof. Dr. Stefan Tapprogge)
- Top quark-physyics (Prof. Dr. Lucia Masetti)
- Development of high speed trigger electronics (Prof. Dr. Volker Büscher, Prof. Dr. Stefan Tapprogge)
- Development and Tests of Micromegas Detectors (Prof. Dr. Matthias Schott)
High energy and detector R&D with the Calice experiment at the ILC
- Design, production and test of new readout components. e.g. the CCC
- Test beam operation & analysis
- Generic R&D to exploit SiPM in high energy physic (HEP) applications
Prof. Dr. Volker Büscher
Prof. Dr. Lucia Masetti
Prof. Dr. Stefan Tapprogge
High energy physics with NA62
- Measurement of the ultra-rare decay K+→π+ν anti-ν
- Search for Lepton Number Violation, Heavy Neutrinos, Dark Photons, and other exotic and exiting new phenomena
- Precision measurement of the Cabibbo angle
High energy physics with SHiP
- Development of an electromagnetic calorimeter and construction of a prototype
- Simulation of exotic decays in the SHiP detector
- Development and construction of a liquid scintillator detector prototype
Dark Matter searches
- Data analysis : Simulations, WIMP physics, detector physics, energy scale, back-
grounds and efficiencies - XENON1T and its Muon Veto, XENONnT and its Neutron Veto
- Development of future multi-ton liquid xenon detectors
- MainzTPC, Hardware and Simulations
- Compton Telescope: Simulations and Hardware
- Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background in the future DARWIN experiment
Search for Axion-Like Particles
- Developments for Transition Edge Detectors for the ALPS-II Experiment
- Developments for X-Ray photon detectors for the International Axion Observatory (IAXO)
Study of neutrino interactions with ANNIE
- Current physics phase (water+gadolinium)
- Study of GeV-neutrino interactions as background for
Diffuse Supernova Neutrino and proton decay searches - Reconstruction algorithms for particle and event discrimination
- Study of GeV-neutrino interactions as background for
- Preparation of water-based liquid scintillator phase
- Lab experiments for the characterization of water-based & slow organic scintillators
- study the separation of Cherenkov and scintillation signals in laboratory-scale setups using ultrafast light sensors
Solar neutrino spectroscopy with Borexino
- Searching for the Sun: Directional reconstruction of boron-8 neutrinos using neural networks
- Alphas, betas, gammas: Reconstruction and discrimination of radioactive backgrounds
Neutrino physics with IceCube
- Supernova data acquisition and analysis techniques (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böser, Prof. Dr. Lutz Köpke)
- Energy and directional reconstruction (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böser, Prof. Dr. Lutz Köpke)
- Development of novel detection techniques (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böser, Prof. Dr. Lutz Köpke)
- Neutrino oscillation physics and non-standard phenomena (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böser)
- Atmospheric neutrino physics (Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böser)
- Cosmic neutrino composition analysis (Prof. Dr. Lutz Köpke)
Neutrino oscillations and Supernova neutrino observation with JUNO
- Laboratory measurements of liquid scintillator properties
- Operation and data analysis for the OSIRIS pre-detector
- Analysis of radioactive background levels in OSIRIS and JUNO
- Future sensitivity for galactic Supernova neutrinos
and the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background in JUNO
Master of Education
- Development, test, and evaluation of instructional series for physics instruction at high school level
- Development, test, and evaluation of physics outreach material, in particular for particle physics
- Development and implementation of experiments for physics instruction
Prof. Dr. Frank Fiedler
Dr. Friedrich Kayser
Dr. Christian Schmitt