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Mission Statement

The Institute belongs to the Department of Physics and Astronomy, which is part of the Faculty of Science of Utrecht University. Its mission is describing and understanding physical reality by making use of a large variety of concepts and methods, encoded in mathematical language and applied to a broad range of physical phenomena.
First and foremost, theoretical physics has close ties with experimental physics because ultimately the success of a theory is measured by its agreement with results from experiments. These experiments are not restricted to physics in the narrow sense; there exist strong ties with chemistry and the life sciences, as well as with astrophysics and cosmology.
Mathematics and computational science play a special role. They provide most of the basic tools of the theoretical physicist. In addition there is a direct and fruitful exchange of ideas between theoretical physicists and researchers in these disciplines, crossing traditional borders.

To conclude: theoretical physics remains a very exciting field with researchers aiming to find answers to some of the most fundamental questions about our world and existence.

The research of the ITP is organized in two research themes:

Quantum Gravity, Strings and Elementary Particles

Condensed-Matter Theory, Statistical and Computational Physics