History of Development:

The School of Physics Science and Technology at Central China Normal University (CCNU) was granted the authority to confer PhD degrees in theoretical physics in 1986, granted the right to award PhDs in the first-level discipline of physics in 2003, and established the National Key Discipline in Theoretical Physics in 2007. The Institute of Particle Physics (IOPP) at CCNU originated from the "Fundamental Particle Theory Research Lab" established in 1977. Over the past 30+ years, the institute has focused on enhancing students' original innovation abilities, building a research-oriented talent cultivation model based on solid theoretical foundations and frontier scientific topics. The institute is home to the National Key Discipline of "Theoretical Physics" and the National First-Class Discipline "Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics," both of which are key areas for the university's focused development.

The IOPP began recruiting graduate students in 1978. Since 2000, the institute has trained over 90 PhD students and nearly 130 Master's students. Currently, there are nearly 290 graduate students enrolled, including nearly 150 PhD students and about 140 Master's students. The institute has 42 faculty members, including 26 PhD supervisors and 37 Master's supervisors.

Disciplinary Overview:

1. Theoretical Physics

(1) Nuclear Physics Theory: Includes high-energy nuclear physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase transition theory, lattice QCD, perturbative QCD, heavy-ion collision theory, hadron structure, nuclear structure physics, nuclear astrophysics, and quantum few-body and many-body calculations.

(2) High-Energy Collision Phenomenology: Researches mechanisms of high-energy hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions, dynamics of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase transitions, event-by-event correlations and fluctuations in the phase transition process, elliptic flow of multi-strange baryons, as well as particle production models and mechanisms.

(3) Statistical Physics and Complex Systems: Studies phase transition dynamics in out-of-equilibrium systems, statistical properties of complex networks, and scaling laws in human dynamic systems.

(4) Artificial Intelligence and Computational Physics: Focuses on AI4Science, the intersection of artificial intelligence and scientific research, low-energy and high-energy nuclear physics computations, relativistic fluid dynamics, hadron transport, and jet energy loss simulations.

2. Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics

(1) Particle Physics: Theoretical and experimental studies on the deepest structure of matter and the laws of its interactions. It systematically conducts research on heavy flavor physics, CP symmetry violation, mechanisms of neutrino mass generation, dark matter models and detection, in close connection with experimental advancements at the energy frontier, luminosity frontier, and cosmic frontier.

(2) Relativistic Heavy Ion Collision Physics: Involves experimental data processing for high-energy nuclear-nuclear collisions, computational simulation and physical analysis of high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions, particle detection technologies and data acquisition techniques, as well as the development of novel nuclear electronic detectors. The research also explores quark matter signals and new physics.

(3) High-Energy Nuclear Astrophysics: This research direction is a cross-disciplinary study between nuclear physics and compact astrophysics. On the one hand, it explains and simulates high-energy astrophysical phenomena based on nuclear physics experiments and theory; on the other hand, it studies nuclear physical properties and constraints on nuclear parameters under extreme conditions using astronomical data.

(4) High-Energy Physics Experiments: Focuses on high-energy collisions, particularly high-energy nuclear-nuclear collisions. It includes experimental data processing, computational simulation and physical analysis, particle detection technologies and data acquisition techniques, as well as the design and integration of silicon pixel detectors. The research aims to explore quark matter signals and new physics.