The Department of Physics and Astronomy has active research programmes in soft matter physics, semiconductor physics, astrophysics, high-energy particle physics and biological physics. All of these groups contribute to a dynamic research environment. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework review, the department had over 90% of its research graded as either world-leading or internationally excellent, putting it among the top 10 in the UK. Further information about the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Faculty of Science research facilities is available here.

The University of Sheffield is a founder member of the international ATLAS collaboration working on the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Group members have played key roles in the successful construction, commissioning and operation of the ATLAS Semi Conductor Tracker detector and have made major contributions to the development and operation of the ATLAS software and computing infrastructure. The group is also very active in the R&D and the construction of a new ATLAS inner tracker for the LHC luminosity upgrade. The activities of the ATLAS group at Sheffield can be found here.

The ATLAS group is a component of the University of Sheffield Particle Physics and Particle Astrophysics (PPPA) group. The PPPA group also pursues an active research programme in neutrino physics (T2K, DUNE and HyperK), gravitational waves (LIGO) and
particle astrophysics (LUX-ZEPLIN).