Student Research

Students are encouraged to participate in research projects during the academic year or in the summers. Many of these research projects are conducted as part of an Honors or Distinction project. Faculty members in the department have active research programs in experimental and theoretical particle physics, and experimental condensed matter physics. Experimental research is carried out at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Senior Conducts Research at CERN

Senior Brandi McVety spent 10 weeks in Geneva in the summer of 2008 working at CERN, the European laboratory for subatomic physics. While she was there the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was coming online. Brandi worked with the LHCb collaboration on developing online status reporting systems for the detector, under the direction of Prof. Dirk Wiedner of CERN. The LHC and its detectors represent the most complex scientific endeavor ever undertaken and will probe the structure of matter at the deepest levels, looking for signs of "new physics" such as the Higgs boson or supersymmetry.

According to Brandi, her time at CERN was "an incredible educational experience. I have never learned so much so quickly or in such a hands-on manner. Working with physicists and students from around the world was very exciting and opened my eyes to how global the physics community really is." After her work was done she was able to travel extensively through Italy, France, and Germany.

Student and Faculty Research Novel Technique

In June 2008, sophomore Justin Young travelled to Berkeley, California with Prof. Brian Sell to collaborate with Prof. Charles Fadley of UC Davis and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL). They carried out investigations of the surface interactions between multiple layers of different magnetic materials at LBL's Advanced Light Source, using a novel technique of generating x-ray standing waves below the surface and throughout the material. As the standing wave is located at different spots on the top surface of the material, its intensity can vary and from this variation information can be derived about the structure of the interfaces between the different magnetic materials. The results of this experiment will lead to a better understanding of the interfaces between materials that have potentially very useful applications in next-generation electronics and computing equipment.