Physics research underlies the progress in almost every area of science, from chemistry to biology to electronics to medicine, and physicists defined the html code for the Internet as we know it. You want to see tumors in your body, try tools from physics. You want to see better, try laser surgery using the math that we astronomers invented to see better on the ground and in space. You want to see oil reserves underground, use sound waves and the math that physicists invented.

Then of course there is the cultural benefit of understanding who we are and where we could go if we try.

-- Dr. John C. Mather, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics

Faculty Research

Cosmology

Cosmology is nothing less than the exploration of the origin of the Universe and of its evolution from a primordial soup of elementary particles and energy into all the structure we observe today. Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow from the Big Bang, have revolutionized our understanding of the earliest epochs of our Universe, established the existence of dark matter and dark energy, and mapped in detail the structure of our Universe at its largest scales. This progress has largely been made possible by advances in instrumentation that enabled measurements of minute differences in sky temperature. UNM physics faculties are actively developing and testing novel technologies for the next generation of CMB experiments. They also perform detailed analyses of cosmological data to find clues about the nature of dark matter and search for new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In parallel, they also explore theoretical ideas that could explain the existence of dark matter and dark energy, the emergence of the matter-antimatter asymmetry, as well as the origin of structure in our Universe. Finally, our physics faculties also develop technology for detecting dark matter directly in the laboratory. 

Theory

Rouzbeh Allahverdi

Rouzbeh Allahverdi

Theoretical cosmology, dark matter, particle phenomenology

Kevin Cahill

Kevin Cahill

Fermions in General Relativity, dark matter, dark energy

Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine

Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine

Theoretical cosmology, particle astrophysics, dark matter

Observation/Experiment

Darcy Barron

Darcy Barron

Cosmic microwave background, millimeter-wave instrumentation, low-temperature detectors

Dinesh Loomba

Dinesh Loomba

Dark matter direct detection, astroparticle physics

Gregory Taylor

Gregory Taylor

Radio astronomy instrumentation, galaxy clusters, gamma-ray bursts

Related Websites:

Center for Astrophysical Research and Technologies

Long Wavelength Array