PHYSICS Information for Prospective Students physics.cornell.edu About the Department Cornell’s Department of Physics has 40 active professors that specialize in a wide range of research areas: Condensed Matter Physics, Particle Physics, Astrophysics and General Relativity, Accelerator Physics, and Biological Physics. The department has approximately 120 undergraduate majors and roughly 200 Message from the Ph.D. candidates, across all years, at any given time. Department Chair The Department of Physics at Cornell offers an education hard to find at any Welcome to Cornell’s Department other university. From award-winning faculty to research and experimental of Physics! Our department is facilities such as the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source and Cornell dedicated to deciphering the Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility, your education at Cornell will secrets and mysteries of the include classroom and laboratory experiences that are second to none. Our physical universe. As theoretical program is flexible, and students play an important role in developing a and experimental scientists, we curriculum that fits their needs. To this end, majors may choose to be “inside strive to unlock, analyze and concentrators” or “outside concentrators”. The “inside concentration” is the understand these secrets and standard path to professional or graduate work in physics and closely related mysteries using cutting edge technologies and collaborations. fields. The “outside concentration” provides more flexibility for those want Physics undergraduate students to develop skills in physics but whose career interests may lie elsewhere. For at Cornell become members of example, a pre-medical or biophysics student might concentrate in biology; a this collaborative effort in the pre-law student might concentrate in business, history or public policy; and a classroom, in research groups and student planning graduate work in econometrics or on pursuing an MBA might in laboratories. Your interests and concentrate in economics. curiosity will be challenged through interactions with our remarkable Studying physics at Cornell is a gateway to your future. For our alumni, a degree faculty and through unique from Cornell has opened doors to employment with companies like Apple opportunities at the forefront and Google, careers in law and medicine, and research and faculty positions of research. We look forward to across the globe. Our combination of first-class research facilities and congenial seeing you in the classroom! atmosphere provide our students with the best environment to learn theoretical — Prof. Eanna Flanagan and experimental physics. 1 10 Nobel Prize 40average Winners numbers of majors per year Hans Bethe (Professor, 1967); Sheldon Glashow (B.A., 1979); David Lee (Professor, 1996); Douglas Osheroff (Ph.D., 1996); I.I. Rabi (B.S., 1944); Robert Richardson (Professor, 1996); Consulting David Thouless (Ph.D., 2016); Steven Weinberg Finance 5% Most common: medical school, (B.A.; 1979); Kenneth Wilson (Professor, 1982); 25% law school, operations William Moerner (Ph.D., 2014) 8% research, engineering, Tech Industry: e.g. Other computer science Amazon, Google professional 8% schools Other disciplines: 8% Teaching, music, 46% volunteering Ph.D. program in Physics (or Physics-related field) Most common choices : Stanford, Physics Harvard, MIT, Berkeley 1979 Major Cornell Electron Future Stotage Ring (CESR) particle accelerator Careers completed, still in 1996 operation as CHESS Discovery of Prof.1967 Hans Bethe today superfluid 3He made winds Nobel Prize by Profs. for elucidating Richardson, Lee, stellar processes and Doug Osheroff (PhD 72) awarded 012 Nobel I Prize 1996. Discovery of Higgs 1977 Boson at LHC, Cornell Cornell Nanoscale physicists are major Science & contributors to the Technology Facility CMS detector. (Nobel first established Prize 2013) Prof.1982 Kenneth Wilson wins Nobel Prize for development of the renormalization group 010 New building Physical Sciences building completed. (PSB) 016 st Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO (Nobel Prize Doctorate of 2017) aided by Science Degree awarded numerical simulations developed by Prof. to a woman in the U.S. Saul Teukolsky 1Carolyn Baldwin Morrison (1895) Physics at Cornell The Physical Review (America’s first, and still premier physics-only journal) established at Cornell in 1893 by Professors Edward Nichols, Ernest Merritt & Fredrick Badell. 2 RESEARCH Cari Cesarotti ’17 When I was a starry-eyed freshman, I started working on an experimental Astrophysics High-Energy Physics physics proposal for a dark matter experiment...completely from Cornell has long been a leader Cornell’s experimental particle scratch. I have been a member of in theoretical astrophysics—the physicists are closely involved with this experiment for the entirety of modeling of phenomena in our the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) my time at Cornell, and since then we have written proposals, coded solar system, galaxy, distant at CERN through the Compact full simulations and even tested our galaxies and the early universe. In Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration, electronics at the Beam Test Facility 1967, the late Professor Hans Bethe and were closely involved in the at Frascati Laboratory near Rome, was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovery of the Higgs boson. Italy. Having been a part of this his explanation of how stars shine Cornell physicists are designing experience for so long, and having by converting hydrogen to helium. new detectors and data analysis to take all the failures with the Cornell researchers played a major algorithms that will extract new successes, has given me a profound role in the LIGO collaboration physics from the petabytes appreciation of what it takes to be a through the numerical modeling of of data generated at the LHC. physicist. I feel that committing to black hole collisions (shown above). Cornell theorists are involved in deeply understand my research has Cornell astrophysicists also explore developing theories for physics prepared me well for future projects addressing important problems, a wide variety of phenomena beyond the Standard model in addition to taking me around including observations of the including supersymmetry and the world and meeting influential cosmic microwave background and superstring theory, for instance, to individuals in the community. I also inflation in the early universe, black develop experimentally testable have some pretty impressive calf holes, dark matter, and dark energy. implications for string theory in muscles, thanks to walking up that cosmological observations. slope every day. Cesarotti is now a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Harvard University. Cornell High Energy Cornell NanoScale Science & Synchrotron Source (CHESS) Technology Facility (CNF) RESEARCH CHESS is the only particle accelerator CNF is one of the first and most that is a national user facility which advanced centers in the country is located on a university campus for the fabrication of micro and FACILITIES (buried 40 feet underneath our nanoscale devices for electronics, athletic fields, with a half-mile mechanics, microfluidics. Its The strength of the circumference), and only one of two facilities are widely used by Physics Department high-energy synchrotrons in the researchers across campus is complemented by US. CHESS provides high-intensity spanning a wide range of disciplines major research facilities x-ray beams to users at Cornell and (including physics, chemistry, around campus which around the world to determine the engineering, biological sciences) structure and dynamics of materials as well as by companies and users are accessible to and molecules in fields ranging from across the country. undergraduate and physics, materials science, to biology graduate researchers. and art preservation. 3 RESEARCH Arthur Campello ’20 Condensed Accelerator Arthur Campello ‘20 is one of many Matter Physics Physics Cornell undergraduates who latch on to research opportunities early in Condensed matter physics Cornell accelerator physicists pursue their college careers. “I was in awe, concerns atoms in close proximity a broad range of topics in accelerator thinking that people are playing soccer and they have no idea there’s to one another and interacting science and technology, from the antimatter right under them, strongly, as in the liquid and solid operation of the on-campus Cornell traveling at nearly the speed of light,” states. Collective and cooperative Electron Storage Ring, also known Campello said of his early days at phenomena that result from these as CESR, to the construction of an CHESS. Campello has been working interactions can produce a variety innovative new x-ray light source with Prof. Carl Franck on developing of unusual physical properties as and the design and construction of an inelastic X-ray spectrometer at represented by the superfluid phases future high energy colliders. State-of- CHESS. “The most important thing of helium-3 or high-temperature the-art on-campus facilities provide around here is Arthur,” Franck said. superconductivity. Research a unique opportunity for students areas of particular strength at to operate an accelerator, test their “Will he be trying to solve Cornell include nanoscale physics, ideas, and learn about nonlinear humanity’s problems or superconductivity, correlated beam dynamics. making wonderful discoveries quantum materials, low-temperature in science?”. physics, and the physics of soft materials. Nobel prizes in this field