Faculty of Physics

Welcome to the website of the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw

The Faculty of Physics is a large research and teaching center. It consists of The Institutes of Theoretical Physics, Experimental Physics, Geophysics, The Astronomical Observatory and The Department of Mathematical Methods in Physics.

The Faculty is regarded as one of the best in the country, recognized internationally for the high quality of research and education.

News

Gravitino, a new candidate for Dark Matter

Dark Matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in fundamental physics. Many theoretical proposals (axions, WIMPs) and 40 years of extensive experimental search failed to provide any explanation of the nature of Dark Matter. Several years ago, in a theory unifying particle physics and gravity, new, radically different Dark Matter candidates were proposed, superheavy charged gravitinos. Very recent paper in Physical Review Research by scientists from the University of Warsaw and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, shows how new underground detectors, in particular JUNO detector starting soon to take data, even though designed for neutrino physics, are also extremely well suited to eventually detect charged Dark Matter gravitinos. The simulations combining two fields, elementary particle physics and very advanced quantum chemistry, show that the gravitino signal in the detector should be unique and unambiguous. | More

Conference Scalars 2025 – September 22–25, 2025

From September 22 to 25, 2025, the Faculty will host the seventh edition of the international conference Scalars 2025, dedicated to the role of scalar fields in high-energy physics and cosmology. The event will bring together experts from around the world to present the latest research results and discuss future directions in this rapidly developing area of science.| More

Making the invisible visible: a new way to boost light emission at the nanoscale

Light still holds surprises – as demonstrated by researchers from the Ultrafast Phenomena Lab at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, in collaboration with the Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, who have discovered a new enhancement effect in the emission of upconverting nanoparticles. They demonstrated that simultaneous excitation of these nanostructures with two near-infrared beams of laser light leads to a significant increase in emission intensity. Under carefully chosen conditions, visible emission emerges only when both beams are applied together, even though neither beam alone produces any emission at all. This discovery paves the way for visualizing infrared radiation beyond the sensitivity range of standard detectors. The findings, potentially applicable in microscopy and photonic technologies, have been published in the prestigious journal “ACS Nano”. | More

High Magnetic Fields – New Research Opportunities

High magnetic fields play a crucial role in the study of modern materials, and discoveries related to them have repeatedly been recognized with the Nobel Prize. Access to the highest fields is provided by the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL), a unique research infrastructure with facilities in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. The Polish scientific community has been actively using this infrastructure for decades, and the University of Warsaw has joined EMFL for the years 2025–2029, representing the EMFL-Polska consortium. Researchers will be able to conduct experiments at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, and apply for access to EMFL laboratories. The project also includes outreach activities, including the EMFL Users Meeting, to be held in Warsaw in June 2026.| More

Strong electromagnetic fields at the Faculty of Physics UW

The Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw is a member of the international LUXE Collaboration, which is preparing an experiment at the Eu.XFEL laboratory in Hamburg. It aims to study the Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) in the regime of extremely strong electromagnetic fields. One of the signatures being searched for is creation of electron-positron pairs in collisions of a strongly-focused high-power laser beam with a high-energy electrons. A key element of the planned experiment is the high-density ECAL-P calorimeter, designed for precise measurement of the energy and spectrum of positrons. The Warsaw LUXE group is actively involved in its design and construction. From 8 to 12 September 2025, the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw will host the LUXE collaboration meeting and the ECAL-P detector team workshop. The event is organized by researchers from the Particles and Fundamental Interactions Division: Prof. Aleksander Filip Żarnecki, and Dr. Grzegorz Grzelak. The author of the project and the main executor of the mechanics of the ECAL-P calorimeter is Dr. Piotr Zbinkowski from the IFD Mechanical Workshop.| More

Polish physicists co-discover “lonely” spinons - a new step towards quantum technologies

Researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw and the University of British Columbia have described how a so-called lone spinon - an exotic quantum excitation that is a single unpaired spin - can arise in magnetic models. The discovery deepens our understanding of the nature of magnetism and could have implications for the development of future technologies such as quantum computers and new magnetic materials. The findings were published in the renowned journal “Physical Review Letters.”. | More

New photonic platform developed by Polish research team

A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal at Université Clermont Auvergne has developed a novel method for using cholesteric liquid crystals in optical microcavities. The platform created by the researchers enables the formation and dynamic tuning of photonic crystals with integrated spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and controlled laser emission. The results of this groundbreaking research have been published in the renowned journal “Laser & Photonics Reviews”. | More

A drop hollows out the stone... and records the climate's history

Water reshapes the Earth through slow, powerful erosion, carving intricate landscapes like caves and pinnacles in soluble rocks such as limestone. An international team from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the University of Florida, and the Institute of Earth Sciences in Orléans has discovered that vertical channels, known as karstic solution pipes, preserve a record of Earth’s climatic history. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters, reveals that these pipes evolve with time into an invariant shape, a fixed, ideal form that remains unchanged as the pipes deepen, encoding ancient rainfall patterns. | More

Quantum control of collisions beyond ultralow temperatures

At ultracold temperatures, interatomic collisions are relatively simple, and their outcome can be controlled using a magnetic field. However, research by scientists led by Prof. Michal Tomza from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw and prof. Roee Ozeri from the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that this is also possible at higher temperatures. The scientists published their observations in the scientific journal “Science Advances”. | More

From classical hydrodynamics to quantum hydrodynamics and back again – how the Navier-Stokes equations describe quantum systems

Although the Navier-Stokes equations are the foundation of modern hydrodynamics, adopting them to quantum systems has so far been a major challenge. Researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, Maciej Łebek, M.Sc. and Miłosz Panfil, Ph.D., Prof. UW, have shown that these equations can be generalised to quantum systems, specifically quantum liquids in which the motion of particles is restricted to one dimension. This discovery opens up new avenues for research into transport in one-dimensional quantum systems. The paper, published in the prestigious Physical Review Letters, was awarded an ‘editors’ suggestion'. | More

A new class of cosmic X-ray sources discovered

An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw, have identified a new class of cosmic X-ray sources. The findings have been published in „Astrophysical Journal Letters”. | More

Quick links

Safety matters at the University

European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers

Welcome Point - practical information for incoming students

Equality university website

Prevention of sexual harassment. Guidebook (in Polish)

The University’s Integrated Development Programme (ZIP)

4EU+ Alliance

Initiative of Excellence – Research University

Research Highlights

Role of Matter Interactions in Superradiant Phenomena
João Pedro Mendonça, Krzysztof Jachymski, and Yao Wang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 133601 (2025)
DOI:10.1103/z8gv-7yyk
Universal Bounds for Quantum Metrology in the Presence of Correlated Noise
Stanisław Kurdziałek, Francesco Albarelli and Rafał Demkowicz-Dobrzański
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 130801
DOI:10.1103/jy3v-wkcb
Orthorhombic TaAs: A New Topological Phase of the Archetypical Weyl Semimetal
Z. Ogorzałek, C.-C. Lee, J. Z. Domagala, W. Zajkowska-Pietrzak, S. Kret, R. Bożek, W. Pacuski, I. Lutsyk, W. Ryś, P. J. Kowalczyk, M. Tokarczyk, M. Polakowski, D. Wasik, J. Sadowski, B.-H. Huang, H. Lin, M. Gryglas-Borysiewicz
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2025
DOI/10.1021/acsami.5c04474
Strong Emission Enhancement via Dual-Wavelength Coexcitation in YbTm-Doped Upconverting Nanoparticles for Near-Infrared and Subdiffraction Imaging
P. Rajchel-Mieldzioć, A. Bednarkiewicz, K. Prorok, P. Fita
ACS Nano 2025, 19, 29, 26932–26941
DOI/10.1021/acsnano.5c08510
Interplay between charge transfer and magnetic proximity effects in WSe2/CrCl3 heterostructures
Łucja Kipczak, Zhaolong Chen, Magdalena Grzeszczyk, Sergey Grebenchuk, Pengru Huang, Kristina Vaklinova, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Adam Babiński, Maciej Koperski, Maciej R. Molas
Nanoscale Horizons, Advance Article (2025)
DOI:10.1039/D5NH00198F
More ...

Upcoming Conferences & Events

EMFL-Poland Kick-off Meeting

Warszawa, September 30, 2025

Job offers

2025-09-15 :: Postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences

2025-09-15 :: PhD student fellowship position at Center for Theoretical Physics PAS

2025-09-11 :: Research Specialist position in the Laboratory of RNA Biology – ERA Chairs Group (Technical Support)

2025-09-11 :: Postdoctoral Researcher position in the Laboratory of RNA Biology – ERA Chairs Group (Junior Researcher) - 3 posts

2025-08-26 :: Student Scholarship: Spatiotemporal light shaping and photon counting cameras for microscopy.

2025-08-26 :: Doctoral Scholarship: Spatiotemporal light shaping and photon counting cameras for microscopy.

2025-08-25 :: Student Scholarship within a NCN WEAVE-NISONO project: „Tunable single photon sources in hyperbolic and epsilon-near-zero metamaterials

2025-04-30 :: Assistant professor, research academics [40/2025]