Examples of Master Thesis topics and selected publications

During the second year of the Master program, each student works on their Master thesis, the subject of which is determined during the first year of the program. A list of topics is published each year in April and is based on, but not limited to, the research themes of the different departments of the faculty involved in physics engineering research. The student can propose a subject, provided a faculty staff agrees to supervise it.
The Master thesis can also be organized as a collaboration with an external partner (university, company or research center).
The thesis must be an original research work, either theoretical, experimental, or mixing both aspects. It regularly leads to scientific papers published in international refereed journals and to the start of a PhD thesis in fundamental or applied sciences.

Here follow some generic themes and specific examples of past Master theses, with the associated scientific publications.

Optics and Photonics

  • Optical fibers and solitons, optical cavities, waveguides...
  • Lasers
  • Photonic reservoir computing
  • Example of Master thesis : Lasing and gain in liquid crystals
Figure: Laser in a liquid crystal cell (Serena Bolis)

Figure: Laser in a liquid crystal cell (Serena Bolis, 2014)

Associated publications: Bolis, S., Celebrano, M., Ghirardini, L., Finazzi, M., Botta, C., Beeckman, J., Kockaert, P, Virgili, T. (2015). Optical gain from polyfluorene keto defects in a liquid crystal mixture. Chemical communications, 51, 47, page (9686-9689)

Medical Physics and Radiophysics

  • Nuclear metrology and dosimetry
  • Optical imaging
  • Nuclear imaging : X-ray Computed Tomography (CT scan), Positron-Emission Tomography (PET scan)...
  • Cancer radio therapy : radio-isotope injection, proton beam therapy...
  • Example of Master thesis : Monte Carlo Simulation of Water Molecule Diffusion for Microstructure Studies Using Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Fluorescence microscopy image

Figure : fluorescence microscopy image of an asparagus with a 2 mm Region of Interest (ROI) in red, analysed by a deep-learning based algorithm (Louis Newman, 2022)

Energy Production, Storage and Transport

  • Nuclear electricity production : fission, fusion
  • Electrical networks
  • Integration of renewable energies and storage
  • Reliability and safety of energy systems

Fundamental and Applied Accelerator Physics

  • Beam modeling of accelerators at CERN, IBA, SCK-CEN, ...
  • Applications of accelerators in medicine, energy production, ...

Quantum Physics

  • Detector modeling and quantum measurement problem
  • Emergent time theories, quantum references frames, causality
  • Quantum scattering theory : low-energy properties, inverse problem, ...
  • Example of Master thesis : Low-energy scattering of charged particles with a simplified effective-range function
Figure: asymptotic phase profile of an incident Coulomb wave function (David Gaspard)

Figure: asymptotic phase profile of an incident Coulomb wave function (David Gaspard, 2017)

Associated publications:

Nuclear and Atomic Physics

  • Numerical modeling of few-body systems
  • Exotic atomic systems : antiprotonic atoms, confined atoms, ...
  • Weakly bound nuclei : neutron-rich and proton-rich halo nuclei, ...
  • Nuclear astrophysics reactions : Big Bang nucleosyntehesis, stellar nucleosyntehesis


Quantum Information

  • Quantum telecommunications and cryptography
  • Quantum computing
  • Quantum optics
  • Uncertainty relations, entranglement and Bell inequalities
  • Examples of Master thesis : From discrete- to continuous- variable protocols for quantum key distribution
    Figure: quantum communication protocol between Alice and Bob based on an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entangled state (Célia Griffet)

Figure: quantum communication protocol between Alice and Bob based on an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entangled state (Célia Griffet, 2019)

Applied Mathematics

  • Multigrid method for GPUs based on a hybrid stencil-CSR format
Figure: low-resolution finite-element-method mesh and solution (Siham Boukhris)

Figure: low-resolution finite-element-method mesh and solution (Siham Boukhris)


Associated publications :



Examples of other topics

  • Astronomy and astrophysics (in collaboration with the Physics department of the Sciences Faculty)
  • Telecommunications (in collaboration with the Electronics department)
Internships

During the first year of the Master degree, all students have to complete an internship of 120 hours outside the faculty. At the start of the second year, students also have the opportunity to complete a work placement of at least 12 weeks. These internships allow the students to actively confront the professional world and to acquire a first experience as well as engineering skills in a real situation. The internship takes place in a company or a research institute department in Belgium or abroad.

Examples of internships
Updated on March 23, 2024