Dr Martin Völkl

School of Physics and Astronomy
Assistant Professor in High-Energy Physics

Contact details

Telephone: (+44) (0)121 414 4651
Email: m.a.volkl@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Physics and Astronomy
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Martin Völkl is an Assistant Professor of High Energy Physics working in the Nuclear Physics group of the University of Birmingham. Using the experimental setup of the ALICE Experiment at the LHC he investigates the properties of the strong interaction, one of the fundamental forces of nature.

This is done by using the Large Hadron Collider at the LHC to collide lead nuclei at very high energies to produce the highest temperatures in the universe, leading to a new state of matter, the quark-gluon plasma.

Qualifications

PhD in Physics, University of Heidelberg, 2016, Title: Electrons from beauty-hadron decays in central Pb–Pb collisions at √sNN= 2.76 TeV.

Biography

Martin studied physics at the Universities of Marburg and Heidelberg. His Bachelor Thesis in Marburg was on the topic of the characterisation of ultrashort laser pulses. For his Master Thesis in Heidelberg, he joined the ALICE Collaboration and investigated the measurement beauty hadrons via their decays into electrons in pp collisions. For his PhD thesis he researched beauty hadrons as well, but in Pb—Pb collisions to understand the effect of the quark-gluon plasma on heavy quarks.

After his PhD, Martin worked as a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Tübingen (2017-2020), focusing on studies of flow of beauty quarks in the QGP.

He returned to Heidelberg for a second post-doc, working on phenomenological studies of heavy quark flow, event-by-even fluctuations, and estimated of soft photon radiation for detector design of the planned follow-up experiment, ALICE 3.

Since early 2024, Martin works as an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham.

Teaching

Y2 Nuclear Physics and Neutrinos
Y2 Tutor
Y4 Project supervision
Lab Course for Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors MSc programme

Postgraduate supervision

Supervision of PhD students working on data analysis of LHC data taken with ALICE.

Research

Martin’s research focus is to try to understand the properties of the strong interaction. For this purpose, heavy nuclei (and also protons) are collided at high energies at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, producing a new state of matter called the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). The resulting particles are then measured by the ALICE detector. He is particularly interested in:

Using heavy flavour quarks as probes of the QGP
Understanding the hadronisation process
Soft photon production in hadronic collisions

Publications

Recent publications

Article

ALICE Collaboration 2026, 'Strangeness enhancement at its extremes: multiple (multi-)strange hadron production in pp collisions at √s = 5.02 TeV', Journal of High Energy Physics, vol. 2026, no. 6, 227. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2026)227

ALICE Collaboration 2025, 'Charged-particle multiplicity distributions over a wide pseudorapidity range in p–Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV', European Physical Journal C, vol. 85, 919. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14577-0

Carr, C, Colburn, JS, Evans, D, Jusko, A, Karatzenis, N, Krivda, M, Lietava, R, Villalobos Baillie, O & Völkl, MA 2025, 'Femtoscopic study of the proton-proton and proton-deuteron systems in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC', Physics Letters B. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139921

ALICE Collaboration 2025, 'First measurement of D^∗+ vector meson spin alignment in Pb–Pb collisions at √ ^sNN = 5.02 TeV', Journal of High Energy Physics, vol. 2025, no. 10, 94. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2025)094

ALICE Collaboration, Carr, C, Evans, D, Jusko, A, Karatzenis, N, Krivda, M, Lietava, R, Villalobos Baillie, O & Völkl, MA 2025, 'Multiplicity dependence of Ξ⁺_c and Ξ⁰_c production in pp collisions at √s =13 TeV', JHEP, vol. 2025, no. 12, 38. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2025)038

ALICE Collaboration 2025, 'Multiplicity-dependent inclusive J/ψ production at forward rapidity in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV', Journal of High Energy Physics, vol. 2025, no. 7, 238. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2025)238

ALICE Collaboration 2025, 'Study of ⟨p_T⟩ and its higher moments, and extraction of the speed of sound in Pb-Pb collisions with ALICE', Journal of High Energy Physics, vol. 2025, no. 11, 76. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2025)076

Bailhache, R, Bonocore, D, Braun-Munzinger, P, Feal, X, Floerchinger, S, Klein, J, Köhler, K, Lebiedowicz, P, Peter, CM, Rapp, R, Reygers, K, Schäfer, W, Scheid, HS, Schweda, K, Stachel, J, van Hees, H, van Veen, CA & Völkl, M 2024, 'Anomalous soft photons: status and perspectives', Physics Reports, vol. 1097, pp. 1-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2024.10.002

Andronic, A, Braun-Munzinger, P, Brunßen, H, Crkovská, J, Stachel, J, Vislavicius, V & Völkl, M 2024, 'Transverse dynamics of charmed hadrons in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions', JHEP, vol. 2024, 229. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2024)229

ALICE Collaboration 2023, 'Measurement of electrons from beauty-hadron decays in 𝑝⁢𝑝 and Pb-Pb collisions at √𝑠_𝑁⁢𝑁= 5.02 TeV', Physical Review C, vol. 108, no. 3, 034906. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.108.034906

ALICE Collaboration 2021, 'Elliptic Flow of Electrons from Beauty-Hadron Decays in Pb-Pb Collisions at √𝑠_𝑁⁢𝑁= 5.02 TeV', Physical Review Letters, vol. 126, no. 16, 162001. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.162001

ALICE Collaboration 2021, 'First measurements of N-subjettiness in central Pb-Pb collisions at √s_NN= 2.76 TeV', JHEP, vol. 2021, no. 10, 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2021)003

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