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Interim Head of the Department: J. D. Sullivan
227 Loomis Laboratory
1110 West Green Street
Urbana, IL 61801-3080
(217) 333-3645
gradofc@physics.uiuc.edu
Graduate Degree Programs
The Department of Physics is actively developing a new paradigm for
graduate physics education and research for the 21st century, aimed
at enhancing interdisciplinary interactions and creating an integrated
approach to educational and research training programs. Advanced degrees
offered in physics are the master of science and the doctor of philosophy.
Outstanding graduate research opportunities are offered in many subdisciplines
of physics, including condensed matter physics, high energy and nuclear
physics, astrophysics, atomic, molecular and optical physics, complex/nonlinear
and nonequilibrium systems, and biological physics. Students may select
experimental, theoretical, or computational thesis projects. Multidisciplinary
projects are especially encouraged, and, with the consent of other
departments, students may earn master’s degrees in areas such
as materials science and engineering, computer science, finance, or
business administration, simultaneously with their Ph.D. degrees in
physics.
Admission
Admission to the physics graduate program requires an outstanding
record of accomplishment in an undergraduate physics program and clear
evidence of considerable academic promise, as judged by test scores,
letters of recommendation, and strong intellectual achievements. A
bachelor’s degree or its equivalent from an accredited college
or university in the U.S. or an approved institution of higher learning
abroad, with at least 20 semester hours (30 quarter hours) of intermediate
and advanced undergraduate physics coursework, is required for admission.
Course preparation in electricity and magnetism, optics, mechanics,
atomic and nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, mathematical physics,
differential equations, and analysis is essential. Any deficiency
in these areas may delay degree completion by as much as a year. (Students
are expected to make up deficiencies during the first graduate year.)
A minimum GPA of 3.0 (A = 4.0) for the last 60 semester hours (90
quarter hours) of undergraduate work is required; however, because
of space limitations, applicants with GPAs below 3.5 are rarely admitted.
Students with prior graduate coursework must have a minimum GPA of
3.5 for those courses. All applicants must provide test scores from
both the general and the physics Graduate Record Examination. Applicants
who do not speak English as their native language must also submit
Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores, with a score
of 550 on the paper-based test (213 on the computer-based test) being
the minimum considered for admission. Students scoring less than 620
(260 on the computer-based test) on the TOEFL may be admitted but
will be required to take an on-campus English placement test and satisfy
the requirements determined by the test results. A few applicants
are admitted for the spring semester, in addition to the customary
fall semester admissions. See the physics
website for lists of deadlines and application materials.
Graduates of curricula in the physical and biological sciences, mathematics,
and computer science may be admitted with limited standing if they
are judged to have the necessary aptitudes to profit from graduate
work in physics. Such students are admitted to full standing after
completing coursework to remove deficiencies in physics preparation.
Applicants who believe their GPAs or test scores are not truly reflective
of their abilities may submit letters of explanation, which will be
considered by the department’s Admissions Committee. Letters
of explanation should also be provided for any advanced physics coursework
taken on a pass/fail basis.
Master of Science
The M.S. degree requires 32 gh of graduate courses and is usually
completed in 1.5 years of full-time study by students entering in
full standing. Students entering with deficiencies may require up
to two years to complete the degree requirements. Precise statements
of degree requirements may be obtained from the department’s
associate head for graduate programs.
Doctor of Philosophy
Admission to Ph.D. candidacy is based on the faculty’s evaluation
of a student’s potential to carry out independent research,
scholastic competence as evidenced by grades and class ranks, and
satisfactory performance on the qualifying examination. Although there
is no formal Ph.D. core curriculum, all candidates are expected to
complete courses necessary for their research, which may include advanced
courses in mechanics, electromagnetism, light, atomic physics and
quantum mechanics, nuclear and particle physics, solid-state physics,
and mathematical or computational methods for physics. Students must
take two courses from a select list of "cafeteria courses".
In addition to the required coursework for the Ph.D., a candidate
must also: (1) pass the qualifying examination, an in-depth test of
classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, statistical physics,
and quantum mechanics (in recent years, the overall success rate on
the qualifying examination has averaged 88 percent); (2) pass a preliminary
examination, which consists of a brief paper on the proposed thesis
topic and an oral examination that tests familiarity with the background
literature and understanding of the physics underlying the thesis
project; (3) complete a thesis that demonstrates the capability to
produce independent research on an original topic; and (4) pass a
final oral examination by a faculty committee on the results of the
research project. Proficiency in a language other than English is
not required.
Chemical Physics Joint Degree Program
A Ph.D. in Chemical Physics is offered jointly with the Department
of Chemistry. Students with undergraduate degrees in chemistry wishing
to apply for this program should direct inquiries and applications
to the head, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
108 Noyes Laboratory, 505 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801.
Medical Scholars Program
The department also participates in the Medical Scholars Program,
which allows students to earn simultaneously the degrees of Doctor
of Philosophy in Physics and Doctor of Medicine. Separate applications
to both the College of Medicine and the Graduate College are required
for admission to this program. For information, write to the coordinator,
Medical Scholars Program, College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign,
125 Medical Sciences Building, 506 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL
61801.
Research Facilities
The primary location of the Department of Physics is the Loomis Laboratory
of Physics, a 100,000-square-foot combination of laboratory, classroom,
and office building. Experimental facilities available within Loomis
include low-temperature laboratories, thin film-growth facilities,
biochemical and chemical preparation wet labs, laser laboratories,
advanced electronics laboratories, and state-of-the-art NMR facilities.
The Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics (LFD), an NIH-sponsored national
resource, is housed within Loomis and contains numerous lasers, fluorescence
spectroscopy, and biological preparation facilities to support its
work in biophysics. Directly connected to Loomis are the Frederick
Seitz Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) and the Science and Technology
Center for Superconductivity (STCS), which provide an additional 100,000
square feet of laboratory and research office space. The centralized
shared facilities of the MRL/STCS complex provide one of the best
and most extensive university-based experimental environments for
research in condensed matter, materials, atomic, and laser physics
in the world. Among these facilities are (1) the Center for Microanalysis
of Materials, with a variety of electron microscopes and machines
for various analytic methods (Auger, XPS, X-ray diffraction, scanning
probe microscopies); (2) the Laser Laboratory, with more than a dozen
specialized lasers, both pulsed and cw, covering wavelengths from
233-1064 nm; (3) the Magnetic Characterization Facility, with two
SQUID-based magnetometers; (4) the Microfabrication Facility, with
equipment and facilities for deposition of thin-film materials and
the microfabrication of patterned structures and multilayer electronic
devices; (5) the High Temperature Facility, with two hot, high-pressure
presses having capabilities ranging up to 2300 C and 190 MPa; (6)
the EpiCenter (Molecular Beam Epitaxy Facility), an interconnected
facility capable of growing metals and semiconductors by MBE and analyzing
the samples (X-ray, STM, XPS) in situ; and (7) the UNICAT (University-National
Laboratory-Industry Collaborative Access Team) Facility, which assists
in preparation and instrumentation of the experiments to be conducted
at the X-ray research facilities at the Advanced Photon Source (APS)
at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).
Additional facilities include the adjacent Engineering Science Building
(ESB) office building and the Nuclear Physics Laboratory/Physics Lab
I, which has 30,000 square feet of research laboratories that are
used primarily for development, testing, and construction of large-scale
equipment for nuclear and particle physics experiments.
Research Centers and Institutes
Special centers and institutes provide greater focus and additional
resources for our research efforts. Among these are two NIH-sponsored
national resources, the LFD and the Center for Concurrent Biological
Computation (CCBC); the newly-formed Center for Theoretical Astrophysics
(CTA), which facilitates the interactions between Physics and the
separate Astronomy Department; the new Materials Computation Center
(MCC); and the Center for Complex Systems Research (CCSR), which provides
a focus for research in complex/nonlinear/nonequilibrium systems.
Off-Campus Facilities
Our experimental groups are actively involved in research at leading
facilities elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world. Our condensed
matter experimentalists regularly use facilities at Argonne National
Laboratory (ANL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Los Alamos
National Laboratory, the Advanced Photon Source (APS), and the National
High-Field Magnet Laboratory. Our medium energy/nuclear physics group
carries out various electron scattering experiments at the Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory, the MIT/Bates Accelerator,
and the DESY facility in Hamburg, Germany; and muon g-factor experiments
at BNL; and muon lifetime experiments of the Paul Scherrer Institute
near Zurich. Our high energy/elementary particle experimental group
has for decades benefited from our proximity to Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory (Fermilab) and currently participates in several ongoing
experiments there, including high-energy photoproduction, CP and CPT
symmetry in K decays, and the CDF vector boson and top quark search
experiments. The group has also been active in the CLEO experiment
at Cornell, Z-boson research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
and the ATLAS experiment planned for the new Large Hadron Collider
at CERN.
Computational Facilities and Support
A department-wide 100-Mbps local area network links all computers
within Physics and, via the campus backbone, to the Internet. More
than 100 Unix workstations are available, as well as a similar number
of PCs and Macs. While advanced students typically use the specific
machines associated with their respective research groups, all students
have immediate access to the full capabilities of our Physics Instructional
Computational Facility (PICF). In addition to these excellent departmental
facilities, students have access to several other local facilities,
including (1) the MRL’s Center for Computation (particularly
for condensed matter and materials physicists), which has 11 Unix
workstations, including several high-end, "mini-super" level
machines; (2) the CCBC (especially for biological and soft-condensed
matter physicists), located in the Beckman Institute and having 30
Unix workstations and a state-of-the-art visualization system supported
by an SGI reality engine; and finally (3) the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which is available for all students
and is the preeminent unclassified computing center in the world,
with the largest (unclassified) CRAY/Origin2000 parallel computer
and advanced Virtual Reality (VR) capabilities.
Financial Aid
Fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships
(all of which include waivers of tuition and some fees) are available
for the majority of admitted students. International applicants must
demonstrate proficiency in spoken English (TSE score of at least 50)
in order to be considered for teaching assistantships. It is highly
recommended that international students take the TSE before entering
the department. |
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