King's College London

Our integrated Master's degree in Physics with Theoretical Physics provides a robust foundation of all of the fundamental aspects of modern and theoretical physics. You’ll explore topics including relativity, quantum mechanics, fields and waves, electromagnetism, nuclear and particle physics, with the theoretical physics modules equipping you with the advanced mathematical tools for pursuing complex theoretical physics problems. You’ll gain key analytical and practical skills such as problem-solving, creative thinking, team work, and data analysis, preparing you for a wide-range of future-facing careers.

You'll join a friendly and supportive department, learning from internationally renowned scientists, including with links to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the LIGO gravitational wave observatory. In your first two years, you'll sample core physics including theoretical physics fields and develop experimental techniques through integrated lab work. The third and fourth years involve applying this knowledge and skills to complex research or industry-inspired problems, enabling novel discovery research and providing crucial employability skills.

Physics has been studied and taught at King's since its foundation in 1829 with many distinguished physicists, including Nobel Laureates, joining our ranks over the last 200 years. Today, physicists at King's are probing the nature of dark matter, understanding the quantum properties of black holes, and developing innovative technologies and materials exploiting the law of physics.

The MSci course will give you a strong foundation across the key areas of modern physics, whilst enabling you to specialise with one quarter of the course focusing on theoretical physics. You will study subjects such as relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear and particle physics, stellar and galactic evolution and structure, exploring unsolved problems such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

The course emphasises applied learning and skills acquisition through individual and group project work, with the option of taking a group project from second year and more in-depth projects in third and fourth year. In your third year, you can choose to tackle a real-world problem with a research group in Physics, including working with data from the King’s telescope or from external observatories such as the Hyper-Kamiokande neutrino detector, which King’s has links with.

In fourth year, you get to choose from a huge array of modules – from the Physics Department, the Mathematics Department and Royal Holloway. You will then spend up to six months tackling a more advanced project of your choice, undertaking independent research and applying advanced knowledge from four years of study. Covering a huge range of theoretical and experimental problems, previous projects have explored everything from black holes and gravitational waves, to quantum computing, nanoparticles and quantum dots.