Nuclear Physics

The nuclear group at UIC originated in 1991 when faculty members first began their work in high energy heavy ion research at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Group members are currently participating in the STAR and CMS experiments and collaborate closely with the RIKEN BNL Research Center and Central China Normal University. Both experimental and theoretical groups are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Located on Long Island, just 20 miles from New York City, BNL is one of the most powerful multidisciplinary research laboratories in the United States. Professors Stephanov and Yee have both been RIKEN/BNL Fellows and UIC is a member of the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider located at BNL. Our primary physics interest is to study the formation and characteristics of the quark gluon plasma, a state of matter believed to exist at the beginning of the universe.

Fermilab, the premiere high energy laboratory nationwide, is also the center for CMS research in the U.S. Fermilab is only 30 miles from the UIC campus and is the home of the largest CMS Tier-1 Computing Center in the world.  Despite being located 4400 miles from CERN, Fermilab’s remote control room provides real-time access and control to the CMS detector.

If you have dreamt of visiting a historic European city, you can take a quick tram into Geneva, Switzerland after a day (or night) of experimental shift.  The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the new frontier of high-energy physics, is operating on the Swiss-French border to take our view of nuclear matter to a new paradigm. UIC is one of the DOE funded university groups approved to work on experimental heavy ion research at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector.

Faculty Working in Nuclear Physics Heading link