Overview
Offering Excellence through Faculty Size and Attention
Auburn's Department of Physics is committed to offering excellence to its graduate students by way of its highly qualified and attentive faculty members. In fact, although Auburn University sits on a large campus, the Department of Physics - with its 1:2 faculty-student ratio - provides a nurturing environment in which the student is treated as an individual, the kind of attention often only available at smaller schools.
There are 23 full-time faculty and approximately 50 graduate students.
Offering Excellence through Research Projects and Facilities
Auburn recognizes the importance of its physics department and offers excellence by investing millions of dollars in the past few years in labs and computational facilities utilized by both students and faculty.
Taking advantage of these excellent facilities, current research projects delve into the areas of: plasma physics, condensed matter physics and surface science, atomic physics, radiative physics, and space physics.
Students have the opportunity to experience the joy of discovery in world-class research groups comprised of faculty, postdoctoral students, graduate, and undergraduate students.
The Department's offices and research laboratories are housed in the Allison Lab (37,000 square feet) and the Leach Science Center (46,000 square feet). Major research equipment and facilities include the Accelerator Lab, with a 2-megavolt tandem ion accelerator; the Semiconductor Lab; the Compact Toroidal Hybrid, a magnetic fusion device; the Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope Lab; the AMO Physics Laboratory housing - among other instruments - the Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy; a molecular-beam epitaxy facility; the Epitaxial Growth Laboratory; the Surface Science Laboratory; laboratories for plasma physics; a laboratory for NanoPhotonics, and a 96-processor Beowulf cluster for parallel processing.
Physics faculty members and students also collaborate with scientists in the Space Research Institute and the College of Engineering, expanding the facilities available for developing new knowledge.
Auburn's libraries, which ranked third among more than three hundred of the nation's top colleges and universities according to a poll taken by the Princeton Review for its guide to the best universities, are also available to students.
Offering Excellence through Programs of Study
The Auburn University Department of Physics offers excellent and varied programs of study, meeting the individual educational goals of each student.
The programs include the Ph.D. degree in physics for students who complete at least 60 semester hours (30 hours of graded course work in graduate-level physics), pass a written and oral general doctoral examination, and successfully defend a research dissertation. The Ph.D. degree program takes approximately five years to complete. The student's research is in one of the areas in which the department has active research groups: plasma physics, especially magnetically confined plasmas with applications to the development of fusion energy; condensed matter physics, especially semiconductors for microelectronic applications; atomic and molecular physics; dusty plasmas; and space physics, especially in the earth's magnetosphere, with applications to space weather.
A Master of Science degree with a thesis or non-thesis option is also offered. With the non-thesis option, 30 hours (21 hours of graduate-level physics) are required, as is an acceptable grade on a written examination. Students who elect the thesis option take similar courses but do a thesis instead of a written examination. The non-thesis M.S. option takes about two years to complete, and the thesis option takes about three years.
Recognizing Excellence in the Department's Alumni
Auburn recognizes excellence in the alumni from the Department of Physics. Department alumni find themselves prepared for their future and poised for success. Students who finish with a Ph.D. acquire jobs in academia, postdoctoral research, teaching, government research labs, and industrial research. Students who finish with an M.S. secure jobs teaching in junior colleges, research at government and industrial labs, or continue their education.
Inviting Excellence through Financial Aid
The Auburn University Department of Physics offers excellent financial aid in order to welcome great thinkers from all walks of life. Students admitted to graduate study in physics are offered teaching assistantships, an annual stipend, and full tuition remission. A small registration fee is required per semester.
As students progress toward their degrees, they usually become research assistants with similar monetary remuneration. Auburn physics graduate students also often compete successfully for special fellowships from various government agencies.
