Welcome to the Department of Physics

Research Spotlight: Physics

Our research focuses on materials physics and utilizes a wide range of experimental, analytical, and computational techniques. Experimentalists conduct research on surface physics and thin films, diffusion measurements and NMR in polymers and solid-state physics. Theoretical projects include critical phenomena and phase transitions, renormalization group theory, supersymmetry, fluid dynamics, polymer, semiconductor and solid-state physics.

There is a large array of experimental equipment and instrumentation available in the department:

• FTIR spectroscopy
• UV spectroscopy
• Low energy electron diffraction spectroscopy
• High- and ultra-high vacuum equipment for thin-film deposition
• Inelastic Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy (IETS)
• Pulsed and continuous-wave NMR.
• A class-100 clean with state-of-the-art atomic force microscopy
• Facilities to fabricate and characterize ferroelectric and
• High temperature superconductor materials.

Several faculty members have clusters of computer workstations to perform computational research. This includes

• Equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of complex fluids including polymers
• Atomic scale and coarse-grained modeling
• Nanotechnology
• Phase transitions and critical phenomena in polymers
• Frictional drag in coupled electronic bilayers
• Transport in mesoscopic and nanoscopic systems