The Physics Department, of the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (UP), India was established in the year 1912. The Department has rich traditions of teaching and research since its inception and the first Ph.D. in Physics was awarded in the year 1926. Eminent Scientists who at some point of time were the faculty member / student of the Department are Prof. Wali Mohammad, Prof. Rudolf Samual, Prof. P. S. Gill, Prof. R. K. Asundi, Prof. P. Venkateshwarlu, Prof. A. N. Mitra, Prof. H. S. Hans, Prof. Rais Ahmad, Prof. M. Z. R. Khan, Prof. M. L. Sehgal, Prof. P.I. John (Padam Shri), Prof. M.S.Z. Chaghtai, Prof. Israr Ahmed, Prof. S. K. Singh, Prof. Tariq Aziz, Prof. R. Prasad, Prof. Siraj Hassan, Prof. M. Sami etc.. Presently there are 5 Professors, 8 Associate Professors, 18 Assistant Professors, 4 Guest Teachers and about 60 Research Scholars in the Department.
The Department offers six semester undergraduate B. Sc. (Hons.) and four semester post graduate M. Sc. courses. The choice based credit system (CBCS) has been implemented. The intake for the undergraduate and post graduate programmes is 120 and 50 respectively. Besides these, the Department also offers Ph.D. programmes in various research areas of experimental and theoretical physics.
Over the years, the growing international reputation of the Department has enabled it to join several international collaborations such as ALICE, CBM, PANDA etc., with Universities like University of Valencia, Spain; University of Tokyo, Japan; Universitat Erlangen, Germany etc. The faculty members are also involved in national collaborations viz. India based Neutrino Observatory Project. Faculty members are also collaborating with the scientists working at TIFR Mumbai, BARC Mumbai, IUAC New Delhi, VECC Kolkata, IUCAA Pune, UGC-DAE-CSR Kolkata & Indore, JNU New Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Ropar etc.
The Department's illustrious legacy and its continuous stride in academic excellence over many decades have been duly acknowledged by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India and Department of Science & Technology, New Delhi, India resulting in the endowment of financial assistance through schemes such as DRS-SAP, DSA phases I, II & III, COSIST, FIST and PURSE. These grants have helped the Department in strengthening the infrastructure and the procurement of state of the art instruments for research as well as undergraduate and post graduate laboratories. Some of the important instruments in various laboratories are FTIR (Tensor 37, Bruker) Spectrometer, X Ray Diffractometer (6100-Shimadzu), Scanning Microscope (DM 2500 M & DM 6000 M), High Power Nd: YAG Laser (Brilliant B), Telescope (CGE Pro 14"), UV-VIS-NIR Spectrometer (Lambda 950, Perkin Elmer), Simultaneous Thermal Analyser (STA- 8000, Perkin Elmer), Andor Mechelle 5000 Monochromator with ICCD and Acton 0.5 Monochromator attached with PMT, Cryo-cooler for low temperature measurement, alpha, beta and gamma spectrometers etc.
The Department has an excellent seminar library with more than 13,000 reference books and nearly 10,000 bound journals.The seminar library has seating capacity of one hundred persons and nearly 400 membership of students and teachers.
Research in the Department is being pursued in many of the contemporary major areas of experimental and theoretical physics, viz, Nuclear Physics, High Energy Physics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Astrophysics, Photonics and Non Linear Dynamics. The research groups involved in these areas, broadly clubbed together, are as under:
Experimental Nuclear Physics: Prof. B.P. Singh and Prof. Isar Ahmad Rizvi
Theoretical Nuclear and Particle Physics: Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar, Dr. Anisul Ain Usmani, Dr. Abbas Ali, Dr. Shakeb Ahmad, Dr. Rafi Alam, Dr. Raktim Abir and Dr. Sudhir Kumar Gupta.
Atomic, Molecular and Laser Physics:Prof. Shabbir Ahmad, Dr. S. M. Afzal and Dr. S. Jabeen Shah Mohammad
Experimental High Energy Physics: Prof. Shakeel Ahmad, Dr. Nazeer Ahmad and Dr. Danish Azmi.
Experimental Condensed Matter Physics: Dr. Faiyazur Rahman, Dr. Shahid Husain, Dr. M. Wasi Khan, Dr. Arham Shareef Ahmed, Dr. Jaiprakash and Dr. Shikha Chauhan
Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics: Dr. S. S. Z. Ashraf
