PHYSICS

The Department of Physics at Colorado School of Mines is dedicated to high-quality physics education for undergraduate and graduate students and advancing the world’s knowledge in the areas of condensed matter physics, nanophotonics, optical physics, quantum physics, renewable energy physics, and subatomic physics.

Education and Research

Our faculty and students at all levels conduct more than $6 million in externally funded research every year, with many projects associated with Mines’ pioneering research centers.

Research centers with strong connections to Physics include the Mines/NREL Nexus, High Performance Computing (HPC), the Microintegrated Optics for Advanced Bioimaging and Control Center (MOABC), and the Nuclear Science and Engineering Center (NuSEC).

Our faculty are consistently recognized for both their research and their teaching, while our graduate and undergraduate students are often the recipients of awards and grants.

Physics is also heavily involved with Mines’ interdisciplinary graduate programs in Materials Science, Nuclear Engineering, and Quantum Engineering.

Watch the video below to learn more about the varied and exciting physics research taking place at Mines.

News

News

Dr. Tim Ohno awarded Jefferson County Educator of the Year.


Dr. Meenakshi Singh, associate professor of physics at Colorado School of Mines, has won a Fulbright-Nehru Professional and Academic Excellence Award to conduct quantum physics research at one of the top research institutes in India. Read more >>


5 Mines professors named University Distinguished Professors, two from Physics

University Distinguished Professor
Dr. Jeff Squier, Professor of Physics
University Distinguished Teaching Professor
Dr. Kristine Callan, Teaching Professor of Physics

Physics associate professor, Dr. Meenakshi Singh, selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-2024 for India

Upcoming Events

Announcements & Info

Physics Colloquium

September 26 @ 4:00 PM
Hill Hall 202
For more information, please contact
 
decorative
Benjamin Jones
 
University of Texas-Arlington
Physics Department
 
decorative
Single Barium Ion Identification Technologies for Background-Free Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Searches

More Info

Abstract: The goal of future neutrinoless double beta decay experiments is to establish whether neutrino is its own antiparticle, by searching for an ultra-rare decay process with a half life that may be more than 10^28 years. Such a discovery would have major implications for cosmology and particle physics, but requires multi-ton-scale detectors with backgrounds below 0.1 counts per ton per year. This is a formidable technological challenge that seems likely to require unconventional solutions. In this talk I will discuss new technologies emerging at the interfaces between nuclear physics, microscopy, AMO physics, and biochemistry that aim to identify the single 136Ba daughter nucleus produced in double beta decays of the isotope 136Xe. If these atoms or ions can be collected and imaged with sufficiently high efficiency, the radiogenic backgrounds limiting the sensitivity of all existing technologies could be entirely mitigated. This would enable a new class of large scale, ultra-low background neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.

Moon, Earth, Webb Telescope images, NASA