The Physics Department started its activity in 1992 as the first department of IASBS. The M.Sc. program was launched in 1992 with 3 faculty members and 7 students. In 1995, the first Ph.D. students were admitted to work on theoretical condensed matter physics, astrophysics and mathematical physics. After a while, graduate programs in experimental optics were established. In 2000, a 7-year program leading to a Ph.D. degree was established. After completing their undergraduate and graduate courses, the students in this program directly proceed to their Ph.D. thesis, thereby skipping the M.Sc. dessertation. At present, the Physics Department is the only place in the country offering this program. In the past seven years, the research activities have been extended to cover geophysics, and recently, experimental research in condensed matter physics has taken root in the Department in collaboration with the Optics Lab, the Department of Biophysics, and the Department of Chemistry.

The faculty members of the Department are mostly young and active in their field of research. Since its inception, the Department has had 233 graduates at M.Sc. level and 54 at Ph.D. level. Currently, the Department has 22 faculty members, 52 Ph.D. students, 96 M.Sc. students, and 7 undergraduate (the 7-year program) students. The Department has a very high student-to-faculty ratio of 7, unique among Iranian universities. Last year, the Department achieved the highest number-of refereed-publications-to-faculty-member ratio among all the physics departments in the country.

Members of the Physics Department actively participate at international conferences and workshops and collaborate with the international scientific community. MIT, University of Missouri, University of Southern California, University of Alberta in Canada, College-de France, University of Strasburg, Wuppertal University in Germany, the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and the Max-Planck Institute, to mention some, are among the list of world-class universities and research centers with which the faculty have had research cooperation.