Facilities
The internationally recognized research performed by Physics & Astronomy faculty and their students is supported by superb facilities, both within the department, and in various related institutions on,campus.
- Building floor plans
- Classrooms, meeting rooms, and teaching laboratories
- Research laboratories and offices
- Technical services
- Computing resources
- Video conferencing
- Shared facilities (list)
- Affiliated institutes and programs
Building Floor Plans
For the most part, the department is housed in 2 buildings: the Hennings Building (6224 Agricultural Road) and the Hebb Tower (2045 East Mall). Additional laboratories are located at the Brimacombe Building (2355 East Mall) and the Chemistry/Physics building (6221 University Boulevard).
Building floor plans are now available on the PHAS internal website (PHAS login required).
For building contacts, see the Departmental Contacts page.
Classrooms, meeting rooms, and teaching laboratories
These rooms are hosted within the Hennings building and the the Hebb building. Here are a few highlights:
Hebb teaching laboratories: With evidence-based pedagogical technique of Peer Instruction built into the lab layout, new Hebb labs are our latest tools to encourage student thinking and learning. The new lab benches (or "islands"), which accommodate 6 students in 3 groups of two, facilitate discussions not only between lab partners, but also between groups. Other than the layout, the upgraded audiovisual equipments also enhance teaching and learning. Overhead cameras allow for small demos at the front to be projected onto two screens for all the class to see.
Physics demo room: The demo room is located behind the Hebb Theatre. It houses various physics teaching demos available to PHAS professors, instructors, and staff. Many of the demos are also used during our outreach events, such as the Annual Faraday Science Show. Its collection continues to grow with contributions from faculty members and students.
Main office and meeting rooms: The departmental main office is located in room 325 of the Hennings building. Departmental members (faculty and staff) have access to reserve meeting rooms (Henn 309, 318, and 319) for departmental matters. To book other rooms, visit the Department Policies & Procedures page.
Research laboratories and offices
Research laboratories and offices for PHAS members generally locate in the following buildings:
Hennings Building (UBC Classroom Services)
Hebb Building and Theatre (UBC Classroom Services)
Chemistry Physics Building (Wayfinding at UBC)
TRIUMF (Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics): TRIUMF is at the south end of the UBC campus; it hosts hundreds of research physicists, including UBC faculty members and graduate students, thus allowing UBC Physics graduate students to conduct thesis research in an international scientific atmosphere. The facility is centred on the world's largest cyclotron, which accelerates H‾ ions to 500 MeV, providing intense proton, pion, and muon beams for studies of nucleon interactions, nuclear structure, electroweak interactions, medical imaging, and biophysics. The muon beam lines are the heart of a world-class Muon User Facility for condensed-matter studies. The cyclotron also produces intense beams of rare short-lived isotopes for the ISAC (Isotope Separation and ACceleration) facility. In addition, to maintain its competitive edge in beam performance, TRIUMF carries out a variety of advanced accelerator R&D using state-of-the-art test facilities.
AMPEL is a newer building on campus that houses a broad range of research in the area of materials, collecting together faculty and students from the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, and Metals and Materials Engineering. Several of the Physics and Astronomy Department's researchers in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics carry out their research in this building. In addition to the individual research groups' laboratories, the building houses some major shared facilities; in particular, a recently commissioned pair of clean rooms with equipment for film preparation and patterning at sub-micron length scales. There are facilities for crystal growth and for cutting and polishing samples. In support of all of this materials growth equipment, there is also a considerable pool of diagnostic equipment including a rotating anode X-ray machine, Scanning Tunneling microscope, Atomic Force Microscope, Scanning Electron Microscope, SQUID magnetometer, and many other pieces of equipment.
Electronics Machine Shops, and Technical Services
The department provides a very high level of skilled technical support along with modern equipment and facilities. The shops include the main machine shop with a supervising engineer and four full-time technicians, two computer-controlled milling machines and one computer-controlled lathe; the electronics shop with a supervising engineer and three technicians; the well-equipped student machine shop; the shared-technical services facility with one technician maintaining research equipment and providing support services for high vacuum systems; and a crystal preparation room. The department has its own stores facility and the undergraduate laboratories have their own technical support.
Computing Resources
For services provided by the departmental IT group, visit the, IT Service Catalogue.
The department supports a large network of computers (~1000 nodes) with a 1Gb fiber backbone connection to the high-speed UBC campus network. ,Besides the regular central services, we offer login/compute servers with a variety of software including,,Mathematica, ,Matlab, etc.,The facilities of the Hennings computer labs are available to all department members.
In addition, individual research groups have their own computer systems.
Video Conference Facility
Physics and astronomy students, staff and faculty have access to a mobile Polycom ,videoconference facility located in the Hennings building. ,A 50 inch monitor & the video codec are mounted on a cart,which can be relocated.,
Shared Facilities (list)
Individual research groups maintain a very wide range of equipment which is available to students interested in pursuing research at UBC. These include, for example:
- 3 He / 4 He Refrigerators (4 of these) and liquifier
- Molecular Beam Epitaxy Facility for Semiconductor Growth
- Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (Ultra High Vacuum)
- X-ray Diffractometers (Rotating anode and double crystal)
- NMR & ESR Spectrometers
- Magnetron Sputtering Equipment
- Microwave and mm-Wave facilities
- Far-infrared Rapid Scan Fourier Spectrometers
- Raman Spectrometer
- Very High Resolution infrared interferometers
- Tuneable ring dye laser (visible); tuneable infrared diode laser
- Molecular beam apparatus (sub-Doppler laser studies)
- Galactic Radio-Patrol Facility
- Laser Systems: A great variety of high power pulsed systems, including femtosecond dye lasers, subpicosecond C02 and picosecond Nd-YAG lasers, high-intensity nanosecond C02 and Nd-glass lasers.
- Ultrafast Plasma diagnostics: Visible-UV streak cameras (2 ps and 10 ps resolution), x-ray streak camera (10 ps resolution).
- Next Linear Collider Accelerator R&D Facility
- Beowolf Supercomputing Cluster Facility
- DNA Sequencing Instrumentation Facility
- Liquid Mirror Telescope Instrumentation Facility
- Theory Center Computing Cluster
- Particle Physics Computing Server
Affiliated Institutes and Facilities
Students and faculty in the department also have access to a wide range of other resources, through research links between UBC and other organizations., For more information, visit Affiliated Institutes and Programs.
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