Welcome to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Physics

Learn more

Letter from the editor

Published in partnership with the American Institute of Physics

Oxford University Press has partnered with the American Institute of Physics to launch the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Physics, an expansive new scholarly reference resource.

The Philosophical Significance of Decoherence

Quantum Quench and Universal Scaling

"Quantum decoherence is a physical process resulting from the entanglement of a system with environmental degrees of freedom. The entanglement allows the environment to behave like a measuring device on the initial system, resulting in the dynamical suppression of interference terms in mutually commuting bases..." – By Elise Crull

Mechanobiology

"Growth, motion, morphogenesis, and self-organization are features common to all biological systems. Harnessing chemical energy allows biological cells to function out of thermodynamic equilibrium and to alter their number, size, shape, and location..." – By Julia M. Yeomans

What's New to the OREs

In March 2023, 62 new full articles and 3 revised articles across 23 disciplines have been published on the Oxford Research Encyclopedias platform. Explore the recently published articles now.

One More Encyclopedia Available via Subscription and Perpetual Access

On April 20, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Global Public Health will be available via subscription and perpetual access. After a successful free period during development, the OREs provide in-depth overviews of the major areas of research and will continue to grow with the field over time. If you're a librarian, explore Subscriber Services to learn how to provide access to the OREs for your institution. If you're not a librarian, you can recommend the OREs to your librarian here.

Why the Oxford Research Encyclopedia?

With today’s overabundance of information, and misinformation, students and researchers alike can be overwhelmed in identifying what’s trustworthy, what’s up-to-date, and what’s accurate..

Explore by Discipline

Working with international communities of scholars across all fields of study, we are developing new comprehensive collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries on an ever-growing range of topics..

For Librarians

Oxford University Press offers a variety of tools to help you promote your access to the Oxford Research Encyclopedias and get the most out of these resources.

Recently Published

Browse recently published articles by month, including summaries and previews of forthcoming full-text articles.