Facilities

Facilities

Astrophysics Facilities:

The Numerical Astrophysics Facility, primarily networked LINUX workstations emphasizes theoretical and numerical studies of stars, star clusters, the early universe, galaxy distributions, cosmology modeling and gravitational lensing. Large file server provides access to Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The facility also employs special purpose high performance computers, such as the Gravity Pipeline Engine (GRAPE). It also includes a new 48 dual AMD processors distributed memory Beowulf cluster.
The Joseph R. Lynch Observatory houses a 16 inch MEAD Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope equipped with SBIG CCD camera. Drexel is a participant in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which operates a 2.5m telescope at Apache Point, NM.

Biophysics Facilities:

Pulsed Laser laboratory focuses on the development of instrumentation systems and their application t the measurement of time-dependent biophysical and biochemical phenomena. Laser photolysis of caged ATP and caged Ca2+ techniques are examples which are being used in the study of the molecular mechanism of muscle contraction.
Modulated excitation kinetics laboratory uses frequency domain techniques to follow internal dynamics of biological molecules.
Spatially resolved kinetics laboratory uses simultaneously resolved spatio-temporal data at microscopic resolution to follow biological self-assembly processes, such as polymerization of sickly hemoglobin.
Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) facility is used to study elastic properties of protein molecules.
Graphics/Computational facility utilizes a SUN Microsystem V880 4 processors shared memory system, a SUN Microsystem Blade 2000 high-end graphic workstation, an SGI Origin 200 server, and an SG! Octane Graphic workstation.
Preparative laboratory provides facilities for biological sample purification and characterization.

Condensed Matter Facilities:

Ultra-low temperature laboratory has a dilution refrigerator, 3 He and 4He cryostats and microwave sources to study quantum phenomena in nanoand microscale devices, superconducting qubits, nanostructures and quantum fluids and solids.
Magnetic material laboratory conducts research on amorphous magnetic thin films, fiber optical sensors.
Surface science laboratory has scanning probe microscopy to study surface structure interfaces at the atomic level.

Particle Physics Facilities:

Detector development laboratory provides experimental support for an international research program in nonaccelerator particle and nuclear physics performing tests of invariance principles and conservation laws, and neutrino oscillations.

General Support Facilities:

Include an electronics shop capable of custom design and fabrication of electronics and computer components, and a machine shop to assist in the design, construction, and repair of mechanical components.

See the Department of Physics Facilities web page for more information.

Modified: Sep 02, 2009