Physics

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 tests of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). All applicants whose native language is not English must submit a TOEFL score of at least 550 (paper-based), 213 (computer-based), or 80 (iBT). Applicants may be exempt from the TOEFL if certain criteria are met. TOEFL scores below 610 (paper-based), 253 (computer-based), or 102 (iBT) indicate the need for further English study. This consists of enrollment in English as a Second Language (ESL) courses based on the results of an ESL Placement Test (EPT) taken upon arrival at the University. A few applicants are admitted for the spring semester, in addition to the customary fall semester admissions. See the physics graduate admissions 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 hours 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 graduate programs website.

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 "breadth 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, biochemical and chemical preparation wet labs, laser laboratories, and advanced electronics laboratories. Directly connected to Loomis is the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), which provides an additional 100,000 square feet of laboratory and research office space. The centralized shared facilities of the MRL 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 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 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 and 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 a Test of Spoken English (TSE) with a 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 program.