Students are welcome to contact faculty regarding opportunities for study in the following special topic areas, beyond the department's standard curriculum.
Opportunities for study may take the form of a special topics course, lecture series, seminar, or directed reading, depending on the scope of material, student interest, and faculty availability.
Students who are interested in studying a topic that does not appear on this list should feel free to ask individual faculty if this is an option, or contact the Graduate Chair for advice.
Markus Boettcher
- High Energy Astrophysics (X-ray, Gamma-Ray)
- Radiation Mechanisms
- Radiation Transfer
- Relativistic Astrophysics
Carl Brune
- Early Universe/Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
- Other Nuclear Astrophysics Topics
- R-matrix Description of Nuclear Reactions
- Detection of Nuclear Gamma Rays
Horacio Castillo
- Supercooled Liquids and Gasses
- Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics
- Soft Condensed Matter Physics (including Polymers, Colloids, Liquid Crystals
- Foams, Granulars)
Gang Chen
- X-ray Characterization of Materials
- Nanostructured Materials by Self Assembly
- Glass and Disordered Materials
Douglas Clowe
- Topics in Cosmology (Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Structure Formation)
- Gravitational Lensing
- Astronomical Data Reduction
David Drabold
- Practical Electronic Structure
- Computational Physics/Numerical Analysis
- Amorphous Materials
- Electronic Structure of Matter: Character of Electron States in Molecule
- Crystalline and Disordered Solids
Christian Drischler
- Neutron stars
- Equation of state of neutron-rich matter
- Chiral effective field theory
- Many-body perturbation theory
- Bayesian methods for uncertainty quantification
- Emulators for nuclear physics and model (order) reduction
- Computational physics
Charlotte Elster
- Any Topic of Few-Body Physics
- Quantum Mechanical Scattering Theory (nonrelativistic/relativistic)
- Many-Body Scattering
- Relativistic Quantum Mechanics
- Three-Body Problem, Field Theory (mostly as applied to nuclear physics)
- Numerical techniques as applied in Scattering Problems
Justin Frantz
- Computing/Simulation Methods
- Particle Physics
- Experimental Methods in Particle Physics
- Statistics/Handling of Statistical Uncertainties
Alexander Govorov
- Physics of Nanostructures
- Optical Phenomena in Solid State Physics
- Many-body Effects in Condensed Matter Physics
Steve Grimes
- Neutron Physics
- Level Densities
- Optical Model
Saw-Wai Hla
- Organic and Molecular Electronics
- Nanostructures on Surfaces
David Ingram
- Academic Integrity for Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants
Martin Kordesch
- Acoustics
- Microscopy
- Thin Film Physics
Mark Lucas
- Physics Education Research
- Technology in Education
Alexander Neiman
- Theory of Oscillations
- Bifurcation Theory
- Chaos Theory
- Stochastic Processes
- Information Theory
- Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics
- Biophysics of Neural Systems
- Models of Sensory Systems
Daniel Phillips
- Non-Abelian Gauge Theories, especially QCD
- Effective Field Theories
- Chiral Perturbation Theory
- Strongly Interacting Systems near the Unitary Limit
- Structure and Dynamics of Few-nucleon Systems
- Electron- and Photon-induced Reactions on Nucleons and Nuclei
Madappa Prakash
- Computational Physics
- Physical Kinetics
- Physics and Astrophysics of Compact Objects
- Physics of Heavy Ion Collisions
- Many-Body Physics
- Advanced Topics in Nuclear Theory
- Mathematical Methods
Andrea Richard
- Statistical nuclear physics
- Experimental nuclear astrophysics
- Synthesis of heavy elements in the universe
- Neutron-capture cross section measurements for radioactive nuclei
- Applied nuclear physics
- Nuclear Structure
Julie Roche
- Experimental medium energy nuclear physics
- Study of exclusive reactions induced by electron beams
- Study of the nucleon’s internal structure via absolute cross-section and polarized asymmetries
Nancy Sandler
- Many-Body Techniques in Condensed Matter Physics
Hee-Jong Seo
- Cosmology: Large Scale Structure Study using Galaxy Surveys and Week-lensing Surveys
Arthur Smith
- Surface Physics
- Surface Analytical Techniques
- Magnetism at Surfaces, Atomic-Scale Magnetism
- Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), Spin-Polarized STM
- Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), Pulsed Laser Epitaxy (PLE)
- Semiconductors and Metals: Growth and Surface Structure
- Nitrides, including Transition Metal Nitrides: MBE Growth and Properties
Eric Stinaff
- Optics
- Photonics
- Spectroscopy
- Semiconductor Physics
- Semiconductor Nanostructures
- Quantum Dots
- Quantum information
David Tees
- Cell and Molecular Biophysics
- Diffusion/Brownian Motion (with lab demos)
- Life at Low Reynolds Number
- Overview of Intermolecular (van der Waals) Forces
- Adhesion and forced Unbinding Techniques
- Molecular motors
Sergio Ulloa
- Physics of Nanostructures