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
Colloquium, October 6 – Riccardo Munini, National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Trieste Division -The First Flight of the GAPS Antarctic Balloon Mission: Searching for Dark Matter with Cosmic Antinuclei
Riccardo Munini
Professor
National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Trieste Division
Low-energy antideuterons and antihelium nuclei are among the cleanest indirect signatures of dark matter. Many dark matter models predict fluxes well above the expected astrophysical background, and no cosmic antideuteron has yet been observed. The General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is the first experiment optimized to search for cosmic antinuclei below 0.25 GeV/n. Instead of a magnetic spectrometer, GAPS uses a novel exotic-atom technique. An incoming antinucleus stops in a large-area lithium-drifted silicon tracker and is captured into an excited exotic atom. It then emits characteristic X-rays and annihilates into a star of pions and protons. A surrounding plastic-scintillator time-of-flight system provides the trigger and velocity measurement. This design gives GAPS a large geometric acceptance and strong background rejection. After integration at McMurdo Station, GAPS made its first Antarctic long-duration balloon flight in the 2025/26 NASA campaign, collecting data for 25 days. This talk will present the scientific motivation and detection concept, the flight campaign and in-flight instrument performance, and the status of the first analyses, including low-energy antiprotons and light cosmic-ray nuclei. It will close with the outlook for the antideuteron and antihelium searches and for the planned future flights.
https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/topics/004179.html
The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) Antarctic Balloon Payload
Colloquium, October 6 – Riccardo Munini, National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Trieste Division -The First Flight of the GAPS Antarctic Balloon Mission: Searching for Dark Matter with Cosmic Antinuclei
Riccardo Munini
Professor
National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Trieste Division
Low-energy antideuterons and antihelium nuclei are among the cleanest indirect signatures of dark matter. Many dark matter models predict fluxes well above the expected astrophysical background, and no cosmic antideuteron has yet been observed. The General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is the first experiment optimized to search for cosmic antinuclei below 0.25 GeV/n. Instead of a magnetic spectrometer, GAPS uses a novel exotic-atom technique. An incoming antinucleus stops in a large-area lithium-drifted silicon tracker and is captured into an excited exotic atom. It then emits characteristic X-rays and annihilates into a star of pions and protons. A surrounding plastic-scintillator time-of-flight system provides the trigger and velocity measurement. This design gives GAPS a large geometric acceptance and strong background rejection. After integration at McMurdo Station, GAPS made its first Antarctic long-duration balloon flight in the 2025/26 NASA campaign, collecting data for 25 days. This talk will present the scientific motivation and detection concept, the flight campaign and in-flight instrument performance, and the status of the first analyses, including low-energy antiprotons and light cosmic-ray nuclei. It will close with the outlook for the antideuteron and antihelium searches and for the planned future flights.
https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/topics/004179.html
The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) Antarctic Balloon Payload
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