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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)
- 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