Theoretical Physics
Overview
One of the most remarkable aspects of nature is that it presents us with seemingly infinite variety of interesting phenomena, with characteristic length, time, and energy scales ranging over 60 orders of magnitude. The research activities of theoretical physicists at CMU span this entire range, and seek to address some of the most challenging open problems in particle physics, condensed matter physics, biological physics, gravitation and cosmology.
Many interesting questions in theoretical physics often arise when the interactions among the constituents of a physical system generate novel, emergent phenomena. How do quarks and their strong interactions determine the properties of protons, neutrons, and other hadrons? How do the components of biological systems influence their collective dynamic and mechanical properties? How do the thermal, electronic, and mechanical properties of condensed matter systems arise from the properties of the atoms they are made of, and the way these atoms are arranged? What are the properties of gravitational radiation emitted when two black holes form a binary inspiral? How does the matter and energy content of the universe give rise to the rich large scale structure we observe in our universe? These are only some of the questions that the theory group at CMU tackles using statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, (quantum) field theory, and a variety of analytic and computational methods.