Physics MS

Major: Physics
Degree Awarded: Master of Science (MS) 
Calendar Type: Quarter
Minimum Required Credits: 45.0
Co-op Option: None
Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code: 40.0801
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code: 19-2010; 19-2012; 11-9121; 25-1054; 25-2031

About the Program

The Department of Physics offers opportunities for students to study with leading researchers in astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter, particle physics, and physics education research, as well as to participate in international collaborations. Coursework includes advanced training in core areas of physics and in topics of current research. 

Additional Information

To learn more about the graduate program, visit the Department of Physics webpage.

Admission Requirements

For admission to the graduate programs, a bachelor's degree in an approved program is required with a minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0/4.0.

Although recommended, the GRE general exam is not required. The GRE physics exam is recommended, but not required, and no minimum score is used in evaluations.

TOEFL scores are required for international applicants or applicants who earned a degree outside the US (minimum score 100). IELTS scores may be submitted in lieu of TOEFL scores. The minimum IELTS band score is 7.0. TOEFL or IELTS scores below these levels may be considered, but may require an interview.

Additional Information

Visit the Graduate Admissions website for more information about requirements and deadlines, as well as instructions for applying online.

Degree Requirements 

The Department of Physics offers a Master of Science in Physics degree that provides advanced training in core areas of fundamental physics and exposure to the application of physics in areas of current research.

This program is suitable as both a means for professional development and preparation for further graduate study. Students who wish to complete only the MS degree are welcomed and will find that the learning environment will allow them to broaden their professional understanding by exploring current topics and trends of physics in an interdisciplinary setting. The Department of Physics offers two tracks for obtaining the MS degree in Physics: without the MS thesis and with the MS thesis.

Students who intend to pursue the Physics PhD degree should apply directly to that program. The requirements for the Physics PhD include the coursework required for the MS degree in Physics, thus PhD students can earn the MS degree during their PhD study. Students should apply to the program that best aligns with their goals. All MS students who wish to continue study toward the PhD degree must apply for the PhD program on a competitive basis.

Satisfactory completion of a minimum of 45.0 credits of approved physics courses is required. MS students pursuing the MS degree with the MS thesis are required to complete 9.0 credits of PHYS 898 Master's Thesis course. Students must maintain a cumulative GPA average for all courses of at least 3.0.

There are no language or special examination requirements for the MS in Physics.

Program Requirements

*

Students who complete both PHYS 554 and PHYS 558 in addition to the Core Courses will earn the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Quantum Technology and Quantum Information.

**

MS students pursuing the MS degree with the MS thesis are required to successfully complete 9.0 credits of PHYS 898. This course is only open to students in the MS Physics thesis track.

***

MS students pursuing the MS degree with the MS thesis should successfully complete at least 3.0 credits of PHYS 997 in their first year.

Sample Plan of Study 

MS degree in Physics without the MS Thesis

MS degree in Physics with the MS Thesis

Facilities

Astrophysics Facilities:

• The Numerical Astrophysics Facility emphasizes theoretical and numerical studies of stars, star formation, planetary systems, star clusters, galaxy distributions, cosmological modeling, gravitational lensing, and the early universe. The facility employs a high-performance Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) compute cluster, each node containing two 6-core, 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon CPUs and 96 Gbytes of RAM, accelerated by 4–6 Nvidia Fermi/Titan GPUs, and connected by QDR infiniband, affording computational speeds of up to 50 trillion floating point operations per second.
• The Joseph R. Lynch Observatory houses a 16-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope equipped with an SBIG CCD camera. 
• Drexel is an institutional member of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) that will be conducted with the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in Chile as a joint project of the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy.  Faculty and students are developing LSST-related machine learning tools and analyzing simulated LSST data to prepare for "first light" in 2022.

Biophysics Facilities:

• Bio-manipulation and microscopy laboratories. Four optical tables and six research grade microscopes are configured to perform microscopic spectroscopy and manipulation on solutions and individual cells. A spatial light modulator allows spatial patterns to be encoded on samples and explored; all microscopes are temperature controlled with state of the art cameras, including a 2,000 frame per second high speed system. Each optical table is also equipped with high power lasers for photolysis or fluorescence spectroscopy.
• Wet lab for studies of proteins and biomimetic lipids, and protein purification and characterization. The laboratory has a variety of chromatographic equipment, large and small centrifuges, fume hood, a spectrophotometer and a spectrofluorimeter. In addition, the laboratory houses a small microfluidic fabrication facility.
• The Computational Biophysics facility also includes: (i) a Beowulf cluster with 46 dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU (736 cores) and 12Gb of RAM nodes plus a master with 1Tb of storage and 24Gb of RAM, (ii) a Beowulf cluster with 44 dual-core Xeon CPU (344 cores),(iii) a dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 24Gb RAM and 3Tb disk with two Tesla C2050 GPU CUDA-accelerated graphics card, (iv) a dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 8Gb RAM and 4Tb disk with an NVIDIA N280 GPU CUDA-accelerated graphics card, (v) a quad 8-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 128Gb RAM and 16Tb total disk, (vi) a 72Tb file server with 12Gb RAM, (vii) a 96Tb quad 6-core file server with 64Gb RAM, (viii) and several Linux workstations connected through a gigabit network.

Condensed Matter Physics Research Facilities:

• The Energy Materials Research Laboratory includes a Variable Temperature UHV Scanning Probe Microscope for studies of 2D correlated electron materials and quantum systems.
• Ultrafast Structural Dynamics Laboratory includes a transient electron diffraction setup with sub-picosecond temporal resolution used in studies of quantum materials.
• Single crystal growth laboratory utilizes different techniques for growing high quality single crystals of strongly correlated materials including dichalcogenides.
• The Magnetic Material Laboratory conducts research on amorphous magnetic thin films and fiber optical sensors.
• The Surface Science Laboratory has several scanning probe microscopy setups to study surface structure interfaces at the atomic level.
• The Ultra-Low Temperature Laboratory has a cryogenic dilution refrigerator and microwave sources and detectors to study quantum phenomena in nano- and microscale devices, superconducting qubits, nanostructures, and quantum fluids and solids.
• The Mesoscale Materials Laboratory investigates light-matter interactions and the extent and effects of ordering of lattice, charge and spin degrees of freedom on electronic phases and functional properties in solids, with an emphasis on bulk and epitaxial film complex oxides. Facilities include instrumentation for pulsed laser deposition of epitaxial complex oxide films, atomic layer deposition, variable-temperature characterization of carrier transport (DC to 20 GHz), and a laser spectroscopy lab enabling high-resolution Raman scattering spectroscopy at temperatures to 1.5 K and under magnetic field to 7 T.
• Condensed Matter Physics group has active collaborations with DOE Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago (visiting faculty Dr. Valentyn Novosad) with numerous experimental capabilities available at the Materials Science Division and Center for Nanoscale Materials. Graduates students in experimental condensed matter physics have an opportunity to conduct part or all of their thesis research at Argonne as part of collaborative projects with the research groups there.
• Local high performance computing facility.
• The Experimental Condensed Matter group is actively utilizing local user facilities at Drexel (Core Research Facilities (https://drexel.edu/core-facilities/facilities/material-characterization), University of Pennsylvania (Singh Center for Nanotechnology (https://www.nano.upenn.edu), and Temple University (Science and Education and Research Center (https://cst.temple.edu/research/SERC)  to access top of the line instrumentation for nanoscale fabrication and characterization of materials.
• Faculty in Condensed Matter Physics thrust participate in several large-scale collaborations such as Energy Frontier Research Center (DOE EFRC--CCM), detector development for South Pole Telescope Collaboration and others.

Particle Physics Facilities:

• The Drexel Particle Physics Group researches fundamental neutrino properties with the DUNE long baseline experiment hosted by Fermilab and the PROSPECT short baseline reactor experiment, as well as the planned nEXO neutrinoless double beta decay experiment.
• We are also active in the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the geographic South Pole.
• The Bubble Chamber Laboratory develops superheated-liquid detectors for rare-interaction searches, including the PICO dark matter experiment located at SNOLAB in Canada.

Laboratory for High-Performance Computational Physics:

• In addition to the department computing cluster (15 Linux workstations), high-performance computing resources include a dual-processor server with two Xeon E5-2650 processors (16 cores), 128 GB of RAM, and two Xeon Phi P5110 co-processor cards (480 cores). Department researchers also have access to a cluster of 18 Dell PowerEdge C6145  servers (AMD Opteron 6378 Piledriver CPU's, 64 cores/server, 256 GB RAM/server) with a total of 1152 cores and 4.5TB RAM.

Program Level Outcomes

Physics Faculty

Emeritus Faculty