The school undertakes internationally recognised research in a range of areas within the fields of lasers, optics, mm-waves, semiconductors, magnetism, superconductivity, astronomy & astrophysics, spin-resonance and theoretical physics.

The image to the left shows an artist's impression of a binary star system, where one star is pulling matter off the other.  This material forms a disc around the star, shown here in blue and white.  The structure of this astronomical system was inferred by St Andrews astronomers.  Using the best telescopes available to mankind, they could see only a pinpoint of light coming from this system.  But by looking at how the brightness and wavelengths coming from this source varied with time (as the stars rotated around each other), they were able to determine the structure shown.

The links above give access to a brief summary of each area, written for a reasonably general audience. More details are available in the School's Research Pages.

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Last updated BDS 8.07