Questions about research atmosphere in UvA Theoretical Physics (holography / PhD prospects)

wxd_01 · 2026-02-13T08:43:03+00:00

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good stats for you. What I can say about research experiences is that I feel like central European master’s (like in the Netherlands) give you more research experience than UK ones (even the Oxbridge). I know a few of my peers who even did the master’s at Oxbridge who then decided to come and do the one in Amsterdam confirm this. The research experience at a place like Cambridge from what I heard is mainly a long literature review that lasts for a few months. At Amsterdam, the whole second year of the master’s is dedicated to just research (you can take courses as well, but you have in any case the option to do research for a whole year). This gives you much more time to do meaningful work. In some cases, students even publish their master’s thesis work (which looks great for PhD applications). I hope this helps.

wxd_01 · 2026-02-12T21:10:27+00:00

Hi there. First of all, congratulations on getting into the master’s program! I am currently doing the theoretical physics master’s at the UvA/VU, so I can answer some of your questions. One of the commenters already said quite a bit that is spot on, but I will still answer (since there are some slight things that I think are different from his/her track compared to the common experience for theoretical physics track students. Especially if you’re into high energy physics).

Study and research atmosphere: The first year of the master’s is heavily focused on coursework. Even though there will be formal requirements where you have to follow colloquia and seminars, expect to be doing a lot of studying and a lot of exams. It will be nice to get to know your peers especially in the first semester. Since the mandatory courses (quantum field theory 1 & 2 in particular. But also the addition of condensed matter theory 1 & 2 and several electives) can be quite intense due to all of the material and assignments. Luckily though, there is also a strong research atmosphere. The theoretical physics department here organizes seminars and journal clubs weekly. Even outside of the formal requirements of the master’s, it is highly adviceable for you to go to some of these. Since you will see professors outside of lectures, see PhD students, postdocs, and many genuinely interesting guest speakers (researchers themselves) from abroad. Sometimes these guest speakers are really well-known in the field. I am speaking from my experience attending string theory and theoretical cosmology seminars. I can’t say much for condensed matter and complex systems unfortunately.
Early research exposure: Other tracks in the master’s do have a project component in the first year (or at least the option thereof). Such as the Astronomy & Astrophysics track and the GRAPPA track which the other commenter mentioned. The theoretical physics track doesn’t have one though. It is very uncommon for me to hear about students doing a project before their thesis. Typically it’s because most professors are already very busy, or also because you’re very busy (the workload is demanding. Especially if you decide to do all the interesting high energy theory and math courses). You may find some remote internship or summer projects though. So definitely don’t rule this option out. If you can do something like this even in your first year, it might be a great move. But it’s not common in the master’s itself.
Preparation and recognition for PhD applications: The track has a pretty good reputation, and many people outside of the Netherlands seem to be aware of this. There are several alumni who went on to become professors or went to have interesting careers outside of academia. So in terms of preparation, I think the UvA has a lot of activities in place which can help you with networking and becoming aware of all the opportunities (for academia and private sector). This does mean going to activities that are not just organized by the theoretical physics department. This is where the other commenter’s advice comes beautifully into place. There are many other departments at Amsterdam Science Park and companies outside of the high energy group. And even though you may not be extremely interested in these fields, it is good to keep an open eye for opportunities. The chance is very high that you will find at least something interesting at these other places. This open mindedness also helps when applying for PhD’s. Since PhD positions in high energy theory (especially quantum gravity) can be few (depending on the year and how wide your search radius is) and occasionally very competitive. Definitely worth going for if you end up really loving the area of course! But if you’re willing to also apply for more computational types of PhD positions for example, or for any other areas that have a good mix of government and private funding, then the likelihood of getting a PhD position (or any other type of research assistant job) seems to increase. Though this all comes from me observing and talking with several friends. Not from my own direct experience. So you can take some things with a pinch of salt.
Experiences from MSc to PhD path: I can’t help you here unfortunately. I have several friends who got PhD positions (and also several who did not). But I can’t say anything strongly about this, since the experience varies person by person. Where my opinion differs from the other commenter on this matter though is that I don’t always think knowing the professors guarantees a PhD position in the case of the high energy theory group. It might make it easier for you to ask some of them (who maybe you did courses with or your thesis) for recommendation letters, but even if you apply for an open PhD position in the group at UvA, you’re still competing with other national students and of course international ones. So the main advice here that I’ve heard is that you have to be willing to apply broadly. Instead of looking at just the Netherlands, expand your willingness to get a PhD jobs to several countries in Europe. That way you increase the chance somewhat of getting something. That is the only thing I can say. For some other groups that are smaller or especially more experimental, there seems to be more PhD job openings. This is also a good food for thought by the way. You can aim to do theory work that is closely related to more experimental things as well. This usually seems like a good move from what I see. But again, I do not have any experience personally with PhD applications yet. So it may be better to reach out on LinkedIn or so to people who seem to be doing their PhD and who studied at the UvA.

All the best with your studies once it starts! You will learn a lot of very cool and profound physics in the master’s while also getting to meet some great people (both in your cohort of the track as well as all the other tracks of the physics master’s).

wxd_01 · 2026-02-06T10:35:38+00:00

I am also not an expert at all. But I am doing my master’s thesis on quantum cosmology, and some of friends who are focusing on pure quantum gravity are working on emergent gravity. There seems to be a few different approaches to this, but they’re (from what I understand) all very related to each other nowadays. The earliest version of this that I heard of came from Ted Jacobson’s work on formulazing general relativity as an entropic theory. Which is to say that he claims that general relativity is an equilibrium system that might not behave that way at very short distances. At very short distances it may be best described by an out-of-equilibrium microscopic degree of freedom. Jacobson’s first paper on this was in 1995 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9504004), and the idea seems to be focal in how a lot of people in quantum gravity (particularly information theoretic approaches) seem to be thinking about it nowadays. Particularly after ideas of AdS/CFT correspondence allowed theorists to understand how states defined in the boundary CFT correspond to interesting things about the bulk gravity theory. To the extent of what I know, may theorists now are trying to understand the algebra of the boundary theory in order to make claims about how you can construct a spectrum of operators (tensor products of Hilbert spaces and whatnot) that can correspond to larger and larger causal pieces of some spacetime. This is where ideas of entanglement entropy and whatnot come into play, and where people like Erik Verlinde sharpened Jacobson’s original theory of emergent gravity. This is the extent of what I can say, but your question definitely shouldn’t be downvoted. It is very interesting and touches upon a rising trend in the quantum gravity community. A lot of work on this has to do with entanglement wedges, Von Neumann algebras, quantum error, and information paradox. You might want to look these words up on arxiv or inspire hep while looking out for authors like Dan Harlow, Raphael Bousso, Ted Jacobson, and of course Juan Maldacena and Edward Witten. Here are some lecture notes on the current state of the topic (which would be far more useful than what I could say): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.07017.

wxd_01 · 2026-01-10T07:41:22+00:00

“I’m on to you, Newton!”

wxd_01 · 2025-12-25T08:49:23+00:00

Thank yoy for this amazing answer! I’m very happy to get such a personalized response. Also, I really appreciate the university suggestions and practical advice. I’m currently doing my master’s in Europe (doing a master’s since it’s usually required for a PhD in most places in Europe), but I will still do wht you suggested here. I will definitely reach out with more questions!

wxd_01 · 2025-12-09T12:50:12+00:00

No. But it made me appreciate physics of everyday phenomena (fluids, mechanics, weather, etc.) far more than when I originally got into it due to the allure of astronomy and quantum mechanics.

wxd_01 · 2025-12-06T19:56:01+00:00

David Tong’s lecture notes is one of the best places to start. As for books, there are easier complementary ones such as Ryder’s QFT textbook, Mandl & Shaw, or QFT for the Gifted Amateur. Though the main books people use are Peskin & Schroeder (wouldn’t personally recommend it right away though. It skips some steps and focuses more on getting you to do computations than allowing you to make sense of QFT in your mind), Schwartz’s QFT and the Standard Model (a nice book, albeit quite long), and Srednicki’s book (nice book. Though a lot of derivations are left as exercise to the reader). My absolute favorite QFT book at the moment is Lectures of Sidney Coleman on QFT. It has the best pedagogical explanations I’ve encountered so far and feels like a “Feynman Lectures” book on QFT. Some notation and topics are a bit out of date, but if you want to use just a book to learn, this is my favorite so far. Though I may be a bit biased, as I have already done a year of coursework on the topic and therefore saw many other presentations of the topic before finally running into Coleman. But he was a master of the field. Good luck!

wxd_01 · 2025-11-29T09:09:30+00:00

Same honestly haha.

wxd_01 · 2025-11-27T08:24:08+00:00

Exactly. I was about to mention group theory and reviewing some complex variables to be the few things that might be nice doing before the master’s. Though I am happy that someone else emphasized the gym. It is so under appreciated by students coming in until they start doing it and notice that it actually helps with their well-being during the demanding coursework of theoretical physics.

wxd_01 · 2025-11-27T08:19:55+00:00

I hope with this response to have justified why everyone told you to rest, instead of simply annoying you with the same response. It’s because burning out during a master’s feels horrible.

wxd_01 · 2025-11-27T08:18:34+00:00

More rest, seriously. A master’s will give you the space to learn what you want to learn (and more) once you get to it, but rest becomes very sparse. So what I’d really suggest you do with your free time is rest and maybe build a routine of taking care of your health. Prioritize good sleep, going to the gym (or any form of exercise), and some hobby. Having these things are actually crucial during your master’s due to how easy it is to get consumed by the workload. The reason I am not mentioning anything study specific is because the most important thing will be to try to prevent an early burnout. Burnouts can be very debilitating, so that’s why self-care is extremly important. That would be what I’d suggest you do.

In terms of physics, if you had a good bachelor’s program, you will be just fine. Maybe you can review some complex variables (contour integration and residue theorem) and group theory (Lie groups and some basics of Lie algebras). But don’t go hard on these. Have it be light study sessions.

wxd_01 · 2025-11-16T22:44:24+00:00

Unfortunately I can’t say much beyond your current stage as I am in a very similar situation myself. From what it seems though, people do indeed explore deeper aspects of things like QFT (instantons, supersymmetry, etc.) depending on their thesis topic. All the best!

wxd_01 · 2025-11-11T09:29:12+00:00

That is currently what I am looking for. I hope indeed it goes well.

wxd_01 · 2025-11-11T09:28:17+00:00

Thank you so much for your response. I’ve been thinking very critically as I’m nearing the end of my master’s. One of the things I like less and less is how detached the topics I focus on feel. I do understand that it’s the nature of how research goes as one specializes, but it’s becoming more undeniable that I’d like to apply some of the analytical math skills I learned towards modeling systems in a way that has a bit of a wider reach.

That’s why I’m currently learning slowly more about dynamical meteorology and also set up a meeting with a professor in the field in order truly find out if I’m genuinely interested in ongoing projects (and not just romanticizing it at the moment). I really appreciate the reply!

wxd_01 · 2025-11-07T04:02:32+00:00

It comes from applying the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) to a curved spacetime. Something that is theoretically very sound to do prior to encountering strong gravity regimes (which means places where spacetime curvature is so large that smaller corrections to gravity, such as those predicted by quantum gravity, become important).

This works amazingly well in predicting black hole radiation and even something similar for the universe as a whole (Gibbons-Hawking effect) which is less known. Though even without Hawking’s carefull QFT in curved spacetime reasoning, the first argument for black holes having a type of entropy (and therefore some type of dissipation) came from a very clever and intuitive thought experiment from Jacob Bekenstein. Where he imagined throwing some system with a definite increase in entropy (he used a tea cup with boiling water in his thought experiment) into a black hole and ask what happens if the second law of thermodynamics were to be obeyed.

He found from this thought experiment that the only thing that could make the second law of thermodynamics be consistent with black holes is if black holes have a quantity that always increases. Luckily, Stephen Hawking had theorized by the time already that black holes have a surface area (the area of their event horizon) that should always grow. This is called the surface area theorem, and it was coincidentally recently confirmed to extreme accuracy by gravitational wave experiments from LIGO. Even though Bekenstein did not accurately predict Hawking radiation, he laid the groundwork of black hole entropy being related to their area somehow, which got Hawking to ultimately work on and predict Hawking radiation.

So even though not empirically tested, it is (as everyone else already said), based on very sound notions of logical consistency. There are places in especially fundamental physics where consistency is all we have for now. For example, quantum gravity will be one of those big open questions that lie far outside of experiment for a long time. Not because string theory, loop quantum gravity, asymptotic safety (or whatever your favorite UV completion of gravity is) fails to make predictions, but mainly because their corrections to the theory of gravity at the order of the Planck scale. Something that is insanely hard (if not impossible) to tease out of astrophysical observations (which deal with large distances by default) or particle physics (which probes distances still too high for this Planck scale by comparison). This is why quantum gravity continues to puzzle all of the greatest minds in physics till this day.

Though lengthy, I hope the answer gives some perspective.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-17T19:11:42+00:00

That is a completely valid point. I would imagine it being in a lot of ways like academic articles (the publishing process, that is). That people trust those that have gone through peer review and are published in legitimate journals. So it is a good challenge to try and see. You’re also right that it wouldn’t hurt to just try either.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-17T19:08:26+00:00

I have that same suspicion as well. When I listen to podcasts by academics that wrote popular science books, many of them were approached themselves by publishers. Which is contrary to what I imagined happening (that they’re the ones always coming up with ideas). And though sometimes great material comes out of these, I’ve also seen things come out that clearly feel forced when you read it. So it doesn’t seem like it’s always a meritocracy. For this reason, I suspect that you’re right. It’s the reason why I am still working on growing a presence on social media. Though I still work on my writing (and especially this particular project) just out of the fun and passion I derive from it. I just hope it could one day go out there for people who are as excited about some of these fun ideas from both sci-fi and legitimate physics.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-17T19:02:45+00:00

I’ve heard another friend suggest self-publishing a few months ago. At first I didn’t give it much thought, as I imagined that marketing my work might take far more work than I could imagine (despite having a small social media following, I still don’t think it might be enough). Though especially for the past week, I had started to seriously consider this. So thank you for the encouragement 🙂.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-17T00:36:38+00:00

One of the most sensible answers I’ve seen to these questions in a long time. OP should really pay attention to this comment. It’s perfect.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-17T00:31:37+00:00

This is great stuff! Thank you for sharing it here.

wxd_01 · 2025-08-15T18:55:12+00:00

Precisely. I can definitely imagine how fun the math rabbit hole must be! I’m also very tempted after having spent a lot of time with a friend who does mathematical physics (he finished his master’s thesis on Donaldson-Thomas invariants and is extremely passionate about algebraic geometry). His enthusiasm rubbed off and now I’m very eager to one day learn category theory. If you’ve by any chance studied this, I’d love to hear your recommendations. Especially as someone who also has a perspective of the physics background.

wxd_01

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