Physics
Driving the Future of 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, applied optics, 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/NLR Nexus, CyberInfrastructure and Advanced Research Computing (CIARC), 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 following video to learn more about the varied and exciting physics research taking place at Mines.
Announcements
Announcements
Physics Colloquium, October 27
Felipe H. da Jornada
Tuning Light with Materials and Materials with Light
Optical responses have long served as powerful, noninvasive fingerprints for characterizing materials, and monolayer systems, with their strong quantum effects and many-body interactions, are a prominent contemporary example. This talk explores how to understand and actively modify excited-state properties in materials using first-principles many-body perturbation theory calculations [1]. We will discuss the interplay between excitons and atomic structure in twisted bilayer materials with moiré patterns, as revealed by our ab initio calculations and time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments [2-4]. We will show that proximity effects, such as those arising from twisted ferroelectric hBN, give rise to novel excitonic states, illustrating how spatial confinement, many-body interactions, and valley physics can be engineered synergistically in 2D systems [5]. We will also discuss nonlinear light-matter phenomena arising from exciton-polaritons [6] and an exciton-driven Floquet effect [7]. Finally, we will introduce an approach to obtain nuclear forces and higher-order derivatives in complex photoexcited materials [8,9]. This approach gives access to both excited-state geometries and vibrational (e.g., IR) spectra, in good agreement with available experiments. Together, these examples show how predictive many-body theory can guide both the design of materials with tailored optical responses and the use of light to control their electronic properties and underlying atomic structure.
Bio: Felipe H. da Jornada is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Felipe’s research group focuses on understanding the electronic and optical properties of atomically thin materials – such as graphene and mono- and few-layer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) – using first-principles computational approaches that employ a combination of new theoretical formalisms and massively parallel computer calculations. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley, having received the best thesis award from the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute at UC Berkeley (2017), the NSF CAREER award (2023), the ONR Young Investigator Award (2024), and the IUPAP Early Career Award in Computational Physics (2025).
Physics Colloquium, October 27
Felipe H. da Jornada
Tuning Light with Materials and Materials with Light
Optical responses have long served as powerful, noninvasive fingerprints for characterizing materials, and monolayer systems, with their strong quantum effects and many-body interactions, are a prominent contemporary example. This talk explores how to understand and actively modify excited-state properties in materials using first-principles many-body perturbation theory calculations [1]. We will discuss the interplay between excitons and atomic structure in twisted bilayer materials with moiré patterns, as revealed by our ab initio calculations and time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments [2-4]. We will show that proximity effects, such as those arising from twisted ferroelectric hBN, give rise to novel excitonic states, illustrating how spatial confinement, many-body interactions, and valley physics can be engineered synergistically in 2D systems [5]. We will also discuss nonlinear light-matter phenomena arising from exciton-polaritons [6] and an exciton-driven Floquet effect [7]. Finally, we will introduce an approach to obtain nuclear forces and higher-order derivatives in complex photoexcited materials [8,9]. This approach gives access to both excited-state geometries and vibrational (e.g., IR) spectra, in good agreement with available experiments. Together, these examples show how predictive many-body theory can guide both the design of materials with tailored optical responses and the use of light to control their electronic properties and underlying atomic structure.
Bio: Felipe H. da Jornada is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Felipe’s research group focuses on understanding the electronic and optical properties of atomically thin materials – such as graphene and mono- and few-layer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) – using first-principles computational approaches that employ a combination of new theoretical formalisms and massively parallel computer calculations. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley, having received the best thesis award from the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute at UC Berkeley (2017), the NSF CAREER award (2023), the ONR Young Investigator Award (2024), and the IUPAP Early Career Award in Computational Physics (2025).
#1 Best Colleges for Engineering Physics / Applied Physics
#1 Best Colleges for Engineering Physics / Applied Physics
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