Theoretical Physics

From the first college observatory in the US to new telescopes in Chile and South Africa, astrophysics has become a major part of the department, covering topics from stellar evolution to explosive phenomena to cosmology.	Problems in biology, such as, for instance, the human genome or the brain, are increasingly attracting the attention of physicists. At UNC, biological physicists develop models for information processing in the brain and develop techniques to manipulate biological tissue on nanoscales.
Condensed matter physics at Carolina comprises several theoretical and experimental research projects. The topics of research are range from ab initio calculations of material structure in fullerenes to Zeeman splitting measurements in one-dimensional conductors.	Building on a Carolina tradition in theoretical physics, the GCHEP group focuses on all aspects of gravity and cosmology including black holes, dark matter, dark energy, cosmic background radiation, and inflation. Of equal importance is high energy physics including the standard model of particle phenomenology and its extension to accommodate neutrino mass, CP violation and aspects of gravity and cosmology.
Gravitational physics research at UNC includes a number of topics, including black hole collisions, the formulation of the Einstein equations as an initial value problem, and quantum gravity.	Departmental efforts focus on theory, in particular extensions of the standard model with regard to the mass of the neutrino and the strong CP problem. Gravity-oriented efforts include work on the origin of the "dark energy", the distribution of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays, as well as the physics of quantum foam and the holographic principle.
Nuclear physics deals with topics that range in diversity from the fundamental forces of nature to the evolution of the universe. At UNC, we study the interaction between nucleons, the properties of neutrinos, stellar evolution and dark matter.	String theory is a dynamic new field at the forefront of research in theoretical physics and mathematics. Its goal is to provide a unified theory of matter and gravity, and to profile the substructure of matter.