The Department Teaching Research Directories Resources Elementary particle physics is the attempt to understand nature at its most fundamental level. During the last two decades, a model of fundamental particles and their interactions has evolved that embodies essentially all physics from atomic to sub-nuclear scales. Examples are supersymmetric and grand unified extensions to the standard model. Cosmology and astrophysics provide a window on high energy interactions and rare processes not yet accessible to modern day accelerators. This is an active area of research, ranging from studies in cosmic ray and neutrino astophysics to studies of structure formation and nucleosynthesis in the early Universe.
Nuclear physics is concerned with the properties of the atomic nucleus.
The focus of the nuclear theory effort is on the structure of nuclei and how it can be understood, both under normal and exotic conditions, in terms of the fundamental interactions between the constituent nucleons. A second area of interest concerns the role of nuclear structure in experiments that aim to constrain models of elementary particles. Last updated April 3, 2001.