Research Infrastructures
The Department of Physics is involved in many large research laboratories with the latest equipment. Many have been financed or re-financed in the context of FCI projects (Fondation Canadienne pour l'Innovation). This is the case notably for the Mont Mégantic Observatory (Observatoire du mont Mégantic — OMM) and the Québec network of high-performance calculations (Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance — RQCHP). In the following we present a brief description of three of the most important laboratories.
Mont Mégantic Observatory (OMM)
The Mont Mégantic Observatory, situated 250 km to the east of Montréal, and used jointly by the Université de Montréal and Laval University, has a 1.6m telescope, particularly well-adapted for imagery, spectroscopy, and polarimetry in a large region of wavelengths in the infrared spectrum. The OMM is the only astronomical observatory in Canada.
Ion Beam Laboratory
The ion beam laboratory — one of two national centres of the treatment of materials by ion beams — has two accelerators (a Tandem of 6 MV and another of 1.7 MV) which produce high-energy ions (1-30 MeV), used for the modification and analysis of materials. Most of the beam time is reserved for researchers of the Group of thin-film physics and technology (Groupe de recherche en physique et technologie des couches minces — GCM), but an important fraction is offered to researchers from the outside. The range of analysis techniques by ion beams available in this laboratory is one of the most complete in Canada, and includes: ERD-TOF (detection by elastic recoil, combined with time of flight), RBS (spectroscopy by Rutherford retro-scattering) in conjunction with channeling, and micro-PIXE (X-ray emission induced by particles) with a lateral resolution of the order of 20 microns.
Québec High-Performance Computing Network of High-Performance
The RQCHP is a virtual laboratory for intense numerical calculation created in 1999 thanks to major grants from the FCI, the MéQ, and other partners. The installations are world-class and allow our researchers to pursue their forward-looking activities on a great number of physics subjects such as materials, astrophysics, and fluid dynamics. The RQCHP is constantly updating its infrastructure in order to offer to the researchers supercomputers which are connected to the network, and which are more and more powerful. At present, the network includes a computer with divided memory which is the most powerful in Canada.
The development of this computational power allows one to realistically take on a large range of physical problems. The fundamental laws of statistical physics, of hydrodynamics, and of quantum mechanics are known, but their application to the structure of materials, to astrophysics, and to chemistry, for example, have been limited to date by the number of computations necessary for realistic configurations. The use of computers now permits us to go much further, and has become of general use in our research groups. It is now the habit of many researchers to carry out their activities using the computer as a laboratory. The researchers of the Department of Physics are at the forefront in this area, and many are members of the RQCHP. Projects include mathematical cerebral imaging, research on the latest materials (traditional and organic semiconductors, disordered materials, etc.), stellar astrophysics, the dynamics of avalanches, and turbulence.
For comments or information : physique@umontreal.ca
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18-fév-09
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