Texas A&M University
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Texas A&M University has built up an exciting astronomy program. The areas of research covered by the faculty include: supernovae and their application to cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, resolved stellar populations, detection of extrasolar planets, and astronomical instrumentation. We are involved in many of the most ambitious astronomy programs of the next decade: the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Joint Dark Energy Mission, HETDEX, the Dark Energy Survey and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
TAMU is also playing a leading role in building up the Antarctic Plateau as a site for astronomical observations; Dr. Lifan Wang is the Director of the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy, which currently consists of three Schmidt telescopes. Among many other goals, the Antarctic telescopes will be able to routinely discover planets of the size of the earth.
While we await first light from these ambitious projects, we are currently using world class telescopes to perform our observational studies: the telescopes of the Carnegie Institution for Science, the European Southern Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the Gemini and WIYN telescopes, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Keck, Magellan, Gemini and Subaru telescopes, and the Chandra space telescope.
The Department of Physics at Texas A&M University offers a wide range of research programs in both theoretical and experimental physics, many of which are frontier topics. The Center for Theoretical Physics fosters the growth of existing programs and the development of new areas of research such as superstring and super gravity theory.
The current research areas of the department faculty include experimental and theoretical research in atomic, nuclear and low temperature/solid state physics. Other research areas within the department include the theory of elementary particle interactions, atmospheric physics, quantum optics and experimental high energy physics.
