Research
The department of physics and astronomy is active in a number of areas of research. Our research activities and interests are outlined below.
We also maintain a summer research opportunities page, which has project descriptions at F&M as well as links to Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) web sites.
Experimental Physics
Ned Dixon
Linda Fritz
Ken Krebs
Scott Lacey
Christie Larochelle
The Laboratory for Materials Physics web page is maintained by Ken Krebs. The lab's primary emphasis is on the fluorescent properties of impurity ions embedded into metal oxide matrices using a wet chemical (sol-gel) process. Check out the lab web page for more information.
Theoretical Physics
Greg Adkins
Sa-Han Jang
Calvin Stubbins
Astrophysics
Peter Allen
Fronefield Crawford
Andrea Lommen
Delphine Perrodin
Beth Praton
Our main research interests in astrophysics are in the areas of cosmology and large scale structure (Beth Praton), gravitational wave physics (Andrea Lommen and Delphine Perrodin), pulsar astronomy (Andrea Lommen and Froney Crawford), and brown dwarfs (Peter Allen), though we do have other interests which are tangentially related to these areas.
A brief overview of the astronomy faculty research interests is presented below. For more complete descriptions of projects, including student work and publication lists, please visit the various links below.
Froney Crawford's research interests include:
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Searches for pulsars and radio transients
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Pulsar surveys with ALFA
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Pulsar polarization and magnetic fields
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Supernova remnants and young pulsars
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Signal processing and cluster computing
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Large-scale radio surveys
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Radio imaging and remote sensing
See Froney's list of publications, student research projects, and pulsars at F&M page.
Andrea Lommen's research interests include:
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Timing of millisecond pulsars
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Gravitational radiation
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Pulsar surveys with ALFA
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X-ray and radio timing studies of pulsars
See Andrea's research page with a list of publications and student project page.
Beth Praton's research interests include:
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Large-scale structure of the universe
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Redshift-space distortion
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Gravitational phase transition
See Beth's research interests page.
The Parkes 64-m radio telescope in Parkes, NSW, Australia
Students who are interested in working with us on astronomy research projects during the summer (through the Hackman Scholars Program, for instance) or during the academic year are encouraged to come talk with us. Along with our students, we have many international collaborators on our projects. We have a Beowulf cluster for high-performance computing in support of our ongoing pulsar work, an astronomy research computer lab for student work, and we provide opportunities for our students to use national and international research facilites (for instance, the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia have all been recently used by our students).
We also have observing projects that we conduct with students at NURO in Flagstaff, Arizona. This work is more fully described on our NURO page.
