Physics

Department of PHysics University of Notre Dame phone: (574) 631-6386 fax: (574) 631-5952 email: physics@nd.edu For more information, please see the Department of Physics website.

A 1937 photograph of the first Notre Dame accelerator, facing SE.
Image Courtesy of the Notre Dame Department of Physics.

Cutting edge research is carried out in astrophysics, nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, condensed matter and biophysics, and atomic physics. Graduate and undergraduate students work with the faculty using local facilities as well as research facilities located in places such as Arizona (the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham), Illinois (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory), and Europe (CERN and Grenoble, France). Some of the facilities available on campus include the Nuclear Structure Laboratory with its three Van de Graaff accelerators, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Laboratory, and the Molecular Beam Epitaxy facility. Undergraduate physics majors are trained to use the most modern equipment, learn about the most current and exciting topics for research, and, most of all, learn to be problem solvers. As the "liberal arts" of the sciences, physics is a training ground for the mind which opens many avenues.