At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Physics and Astronomy, we have outstanding facilities and world-renowned faculty studying frontier areas of physics and astronomy from quantum information to the physics of life to the very stuff of the universe. You will join a group of talented graduate student colleagues in classrooms and in laboratories, all in a beautiful place to live. The basic requirement for the Ph.D. degree is the successful completion of signicant, original research in physics. This research is presented in a written dissertation and defended in a nal oral examination. To prepare for this work, Ph.D. candidates are required to take courses in core areas [classical mechanics (CM), quantum mechanics (QM), electromagnetism (EM), and statistical physics (SM)] as well as electives in other areas