The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly known as the Shanghai ranking, is a publication that was founded and compiled by the Shanghai Jiaotong University to rank universities globally. The rankings have been conducted since 2003 and updated annually. Since 2009, the rankings have been published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. The ranking considers every university that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, Highly Cited Researchers, or papers published in Nature or Science. In addition, universities with significant amount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included. In total, more than 1000 universities are currently ranked and the best 500 are published on the web. This page reports the ranking of the best 50 universities in Phisics.
 

Ranking of the best 20 world universities - 2011 edition

Rank	University	Country	Score	Publications based score
1	Harvard University		100.0	58.3
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)		99.0	76.4
3	California Institute of Technology		96.7	75.9
4	Princeton University		96.0	61.8
5	University of California, Berkeley		93.0	81.2
6	Stanford University		89.3	60.1
7	The University of Tokyo		86.4	100.0
8	University of Cambridge		82.4	74.1
9	University of Chicago		78.0	43.3
10	Cornell University		77.6	50.1
11	University of California, Santa Barbara		70.4	58.7
12	University of Colorado at Boulder		69.6	50.0
13	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign		69.2	56.7
14	The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine		69.0	61.7
15	Columbia University		67.3	49.7
16	University of Pennsylvania		67.2	41.2
17	University of Maryland, College Park		64.0	65.6
18	University of Paris Sud (Paris 11)		63.4	75.0
19	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich		63.3	56.0
20	University of Michigan - Ann Arbor		63.2	62.2
21	University of California, San Diego		61.1	56.0
22	University of California, Los Angeles		60.5	58.5
23	University of Wisconsin - Madison		59.7	56.5
24	The Ohio State University - Columbus		58.8	52.1
25	University of Munich		58.2	43.5
26	University of Washington		57.5	49.8
27	University of Oxford		57.4	62.8
28	Kyoto University		57.1	75.6
29	Ecole Normale Superieure - Paris		57.0	41.4
30	The Johns Hopkins University		56.9	50.5
31	University of Massachusetts Amherst		56.4	39.0
32	The University of Texas at Austin		55.7	55.9
33	University of Arizona		55.5	58.3
34	University of California, Santa Cruz		55.2	41.0
35	University of California, Irvine		55.0	45.0
36	Pennsylvania State University - University Park		54.2	56.0
37	Tohoku University		54.1	76.8
38	The University of Manchester		53.9	50.4
38	University College London		53.9	54.6
40	University of Toronto		53.5	53.9
41	University of Heidelberg		53.3	48.3
42	University of Durham		53.2	41.1
43	Yale University		53.1	45.0
44	The Australian National University		52.6	49.2
45	Osaka University		52.4	73.9
45	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick		52.4	42.3
45	University of Rochester		52.4	45.6
48	University of Frankfurt		52.3	39.3
49	University of Hawaii at Manoa		52.2	39.2
50	Northwestern University		51.8	50.9
51-75	Carnegie Mellon University			36.5
51-75	Duke University			37.8
51-75	Florida State University			39.9
51-75	Iowa State University			48.1
51-75	Leiden University			38.8
51-75	McGill University			47.2
51-75	McMaster University			33.8
51-75	Michigan State University			45.6
51-75	Seoul National University			57.7
51-75	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne			53.6
51-75	Technical University Munich			47.7
51-75	Texas A&M University - College Station			47.9
51-75	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem			35.4
51-75	The University of Edinburgh			44.1
51-75	Tokyo Institute of Technology			61.8
51-75	University of Bonn			44.5
51-75	University of British Columbia			45.7
51-75	University of Geneva			40.1
51-75	University of Houston			35.6
51-75	University of Mainz			41.6
51-75	University of Padua			50.6
51-75	University of Roma - La Sapienza			58.3
51-75	University of Victoria			31.9
51-75	Utrecht University			35.0
51-75	Weizmann Institute of Science			40.9