The Institute for Fundamental Science (IFS) enhances the experimental, theoretical, and astronomy research activities at the University of Oregon. IFS is one of several centers and institutes supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, and maintains close relationships with the Department of Physics, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Mathematics, and the Materials Science Institute.
The institute hosts visiting scientists, supports graduate and undergraduate student research, facilitates interaction between the experimental activities and theoretical investigations of IFS members, and fosters communication of research to the broader community.
IFS members have major involvement in international collaborations including the ATLAS and FASER Experiments at CERN, LIGO’s gravitational wave observatories, and others. We have vigorous programs of research in astronomy and astrophysics; condensed matter theory and statistical mechanics; data science; mathematics; particle theory; quantum information and quantum optics; and the International Linear Collider project.
Center Activities
A celestial trifecta: What to know about Tuesday’s lunar eclipse
16 September 2024
Source
Stargazers will be in for another celestial treat Tuesday night as three cosmic events will occur at the same time during the full moon.
After last month brought space enthusiasts a blue supermoon, September’s harvest moon will not only coincide with a supermoon, but also with a blood moon and partial lunar eclipse.
While harvest moons happen each year close to the start of fall and supermoons three to four times a year, all three events taking place at the same time are “quite rare,” astrophysicist Teresa Monsue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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IFS Seminar October 22, 2024: Jessie Shelton (UIUC)
Gravitational Footprints of Early Matter Domination
Speaker: Jessie Shelton (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Date: Tuesday, October 22
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Location: 472 Willamette Hall (IFS Seminar Room)
Abstract: The cosmic evolution of our universe prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is almost entirely unknown. One generic possibility, motivated by models for dark matter, baryogenesis and beyond, is an epoch of early matter domination, where a metastable species temporarily makes up the dominant component of the universe. I will discuss some well-motivated scenarios, their
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CERN70: Switching on the Large Hadron Collider
4 October 2024
Lyn Evans was Project Leader for the Large Hadron Collider
Source || Part 18 of the CERN70 Series
The beginning of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) dates back to the early 1980s. CERN’s major accelerator, the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), was still in its study phase. But scientists were already considering using its 27 km tunnel for a proton collider.
Hadron colliders were indeed extremely promising. CERN had developed revolutionary techniques with the ISR, the world’s first proton–proton collider in the 1970s and was preparing
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