Physics & Astronomy at University of Rochester

  

Contact Info
Address:  500 Wilson Boulevard
Box 270171
Rochester, NY 14627-0171
USA
Phone:  (585) 275-4351
Fax:  (585) 273-3237
Email:  ali@pas.rochester.edu
Website:  http://www.pas.rochester.edu/
Chair: Dr. Arie Bodek
 
General Department Info
Degrees
Offered:		  Bachelors Masters Doctorate
Staff & Student
Numbers:		  Faculty: 51
Staff: 31
Post Docs: 35
Grads: 101
Under Grads: 68
Research
Areas:		  Theoretical: astrophysics, condensed matter, nuclear physics, particle physics, plasma physics, quantum optics. Experimental: astronomy, biological physics, condensed matter, nuclear physics, particle physics, quantum optics.
Facilities:  Infrared-astronomical instrumentation has been constructed and is in use on a variety of telescopes, including national facilities in Arizona and Hawaii. The C.E. Kenneth Mees Observatory houses a 61-cm reflector equipped for imaging spectroscopy and photometry. The atomic, molecular and optical physics group offers extensive research facilities, which include a broad range of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared gas laser systems; ultra-high-stability CW dye, solid-state, and diode laser systems; ultrafast lasers (femtosecond); and an ultra-high-power (psec, chirped-pulse, regeneratively amplified) pulsed solid-state laser system. The group's capabilities include sophisticated photon-counting, laser cooling and trapping, atomic beam, and laser physics experimentation. For research in condensed matter, the department offers a unique magnetooptical spectroscopy lab and an advanced surface science research lab that is equipped with X-ray, ultraviolet, and inverse photoemission spectroscopy; scanning-tunneling, atomic-force, and near field microscopy; low energy electron and photoelectron diffraction facilities; and advanced thin-film deposition systems. In its low-temperature lab, there is a helium dilution refrigerator and a superconducting magnet for measurements of correlated and mesoscopic systems. Research in high-energy nuclear physics is being carried out with the PHOBOS detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Besides RHIC, instrumentation developed for nuclear physics is used in experiments at other major accelerator facilities such as Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. In addition, the department is involved with large, sensitive, high-energy physics detectors. These are developed on campus and assembled and operated at international and national laboratories, including CERN, DESY, Fermilab, Brookhaven, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Wilson Lab at Ithaca, New York. Departmental general computing facilities include UNIX workstations as well as Power Macs and PCs connected to Internet 2 via the campus FDDI backbone; each of the research groups has additional major computing facilities. The Physics-Optics-Astronomy library, within the physics building, provides ready access to more than 225 journals. The facilities of the University's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (including supercomputers) and the Center for Optoelectronics and Imaging are also available for collaborative efforts.