Department of Physics
Physicists ask the most fundamental questions about science. Why are we here? What are we made of?
Physicists at New Mexico Tech are most interested in phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere and in deep space.
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Active Research Groups:
Affilitated Institutions:
Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Upcoming Events:
Thursday Department Seminars
Dr. Park Edward Hays, Sandia National Laboratories
DrEVL - Dragonfly Eye Viewing Lightning optical radiometer construction, characterization, and observations
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Physics PhD Defense - Dylan Ward
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Friday Nov 7, 2025 ⋅ 2pm – 3pm
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TITLE: Exploring Water Masers in the Central Molecular Zone with SWAG Abstract The inner 500 pc of our Galaxy is known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) and contains a large amount of dense gas, strong magnetic fields, and energetic particles. The CMZ is an extreme environment, compared to the disk, and despite its large gas reservoir, its star formation appears to be inefficient. Understanding why star formation is suppressed here remains an open question. Maser emission provides an excellent tool for investigating these processes, offering precise high-resolution probes of both star-forming regions and late-stage stellar evolution under these unique Galactic center conditions. My dissertation uses data from the Survey of Water and Ammonia in the Galactic Center (SWAG), which is a major line imaging survey using the Australia Telescope Compact Array with a goal to map out the molecular content in the entire CMZ. The SWAG data includes the collisionally pumped 22 GHz H2O maser transition which is typically used as a tracer for phases of stellar evolution, including both young stellar objects (YSOs) and evolved stars. The SWAG survey provides data for the entire CMZ with approximately 0.9 pc spatial resolution in the Galactic center, enabling the construction of a large-scale H2O maser catalog in this unique environment. By cross-matching the SWAG detections with infrared, stellar, and other maser catalogs, I identified the likely counterparts responsible for the emission and examined how their spatial distribution relates to the underlying molecular gas, which favors positive Galactic longitudes. I also constructed maser luminosity functions for the full sample and for the YSO and evolved star subsets, comparing them with previous Galactic studies. Because star formation in the CMZ is known to be suppressed, I used the number of YSO-associated H2O masers, together with estimates of maser lifetimes and detection rates, to infer a star formation rate for the CMZ. The evolved star population was also examined by cross-matching H2O and SiO masers. This comparison provides direct measurements of stellar wind speeds, with SiO tracing inner winds and H2O probing the accelerated outflow at larger radii. I also explored how these wind speeds relate to mid-infrared colors, which reflect dust content in the circumstellar envelope. These results show that H2O masers are powerful probes of both ongoing star formation and late-stage stellar evolution in the unique environment of the Galactic center. Zoom Meeting ID: 945 7734 7996
Zoom Link: https://nmt-edu.zoom.us/ |
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Current News Around our Department
This video provides a glimpse of what it's like to be a student in the Physics Department at New Mexico Tech. It was created by former Physics PhD student Daniel Jensen.
