The Dark Matter Group has an opening for a PhD position on the XENONnT experiment. The XENON collaboration is currently completing the construction of XENONnT, expected to become the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector. The experiment is located in the underground Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy and run by an international team of scientists. The Amsterdam group is closely involved in developing and building XENONnT and will take an important role in the upcoming data analysis. The group also operates a local R&D detector called XAMS, a dual-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber. While the PhD position is at the University of Amsterdam, you will be fully embedded in the XENON dark matter group at Nikhef.

What are you going to do?

• Work on XENONnT dark matter data analysis, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of light dark matter signals;
• operate and analyze data from the local XAMS R&D setup.

What do we require?

• An MSc in Physics or an equivalent degree;
• strong software skills are desirable;
• excellent English communication skills.

Our offer

A temporary contract for 38 hours per week for the duration of 4 years (initial appointment will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it will be extended for a total duration of 4 years) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. The position will require travel to the experimental site in Italy. The PhD candidate is also expected to assist in university teaching as a teaching assistant.

The salary, depending on relevant experience before the beginning of the employment contract, will be €2,325 to €2,972 (scale P) gross per month, based on a full-time contract (38 hours a week), exclusive 8 % holiday allowance and 8.3 % end-of-year bonus. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits like our excellent opportunities for study and development? Then find out more about working at the Faculty of Science.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science - Dark Matter group

The University of Amsterdam’s Dark Matter group is embedded at Nikhef, the national institute for subatomic physics in the Netherlands. Approximately 175 physicists and 75 technical staff members work together in an open and international scientific environment at Nikhef. Jointly, they perform excellent theoretical and experimental research in the fields of particle- and astroparticle physics. Among the research collaborations Nikhef participates in are the ATLAS, LHCb and ALICE experiments at CERN, the KM3NeT neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean, the Virgo interferometer in Pisa, the XENON dark matter detector in Gran Sasso, Italy and the Pierre Auger cosmic ray observatory in Argentina. Nikhef is a collaboration between six major Dutch universities and the Nikhef research institute. The Dark Matter Group is also part of GRAPPA, a collaboration between UvA’s Institute of Physics and Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy.