Quantum Optics with Superconducting Circuits: From Single Photons to Schrodinger Cats Over the last decade and a half, superconducting circuits have advanced to the point where we can generate and detect highly-entangled states, and perform universal quantum gates. Meanwhile, the coherence properties of these systems have improved more than 10,000-fold. Continue reading »
Quantize This! This talk explores some of the quirkier aspects of quantum mechanics, including the quantum speed limit, the use of quantum entanglement and quantum codes by living systems, and the quantum mechanics of time travel. Continue reading »
Discovery! How we did it and what we know so far One of the great intellectual achievements of human kind is the standard model of particle physics. This theory describes how fundamental particles like electrons and quarks interact and gives us the building blocks for understanding the universe we see… Continue reading »
“Stay on Target! The origins of persistence in amoeboid society” Directed motion enables neutrophils (white blood cells) to hunt invaders, neural axons to find their targets, and embryonic cells to properly develop into a complete organism. Amoeboid motility has an underlying directional persistence – even in the absence of external signals – which helps… Continue reading »
Modeling the merger of binary black holes requires numerical simulations. Solving the equations of general relativity on the computer, however, presents unique challenges. I will describe some of these challenges and will discuss how these problems were solved. I will then review some recent simulations at the coalescence and merger… Continue reading »
Recent results on the thermodynamics and kinetics of RNA secondary structure Prof. Peter Clote and Kourosh Zarringham Physics & Astronomy Colloquium 2:30 p.m., December 2, 2011 Thompson Physical Laboratory 205 An RNA secondary structure is a type of planar graph, consisting of Watson-Crick and wobble base… Continue reading »
The Early History of Entanglement: EPR before 1935 Louisa Guilder Physics & Astronomy Colloquium 2:30 p.m., October 14, 2011 Thompson Physical Laboratory 205 Heisenberg said that “science is rooted in conversations.” If the conversations aren’t clear, the science can suffer. This is what happened to the foundations… Continue reading »
Why Aren’t There More Stars? The Battle Against Gravity in our Galaxy’s Nurseries Ned Ladd, Bucknell University & Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Abstract: Stars form via the gravitational collapse of large, diffuse, molecular clouds that occupy much of the disk of our galaxy. However, not all of this cloud… Continue reading »
The Solar System Beyond Sedna Dr. Meg Schwamb – Yale University The discovery of Sedna on a highly eccentric orbit beyond Neptune challenges our understanding of the solar system and suggests the presence of a population of icy bodies residing past the Kuiper belt. With a perihelion of 76 AU,… Continue reading »
“Supersymmetry as a Theoretical Toolbox” Dr. Brian Wecht, ’97 University of Michigan One usually first hears about supersymmetry as the leading candidate for physics beyond the Standard Model. However, many physicists see supersymmetry as useful for an entirely different purpose, namely, as a method of understanding hard problems in… Continue reading »
Glass Transition Temperature of Polymer Films Ophelia K. C. Tsui Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA Abstract Unlike simple liquids, polymers typically transform into a solid-like glassy state by the glass transition – a process in which the liquid viscosity increases rapidly upon cooling past the glass… Continue reading »
Professor Pan Li – University of Albany Title: Effect of Mg2+ ions on mechanical unfolding of a two-base-pair RNA kissing hairpin Structure and function of RNA critically depend on ionic conditions. However, rigorous thermodynamic analysis of metal ions binding to polyelectric RNA remains a daunting task. To reduce complexity of… Continue reading »
Dr. Leonardo DiCarlo – Yale University Harnessing multi-qubit entanglement in superconducting circuits Abstract Entanglement has traditionally played a central role in foundational discussions of quantum mechanics. The measurement of correlations between entangled quantum particles exhibits results at odds with classical behavior. With the ample confirmation of quantum mechanical predictions in… Continue reading »
Prof. Kurt Jacobs – Boston University “Putting the Quantum into Mechanics” In the last few years great advances have been made in the construction and measurement of nano-mechanical resonators and mesoscopic superconducting circuits. To observe quantum behavior of mechanical resonators, one must induce nonlinear dynamics in these systems, or… Continue reading »
Dr. Seth Shostak – SETI Institute Title: “Efficiency in SETI Searches” “When Will We Discover the Extraterrestrials?” The scientific hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence is now into its fifth decade, and we still haven’t uncovered a confirmed peep from the cosmos. For that matter, we still don’t know if life –… Continue reading »
Prof. Jack Harris – Yale University Title: “How an atomic orbital can flow through a resistive wire” One of the most remarkable predictions of the quantum theory of electronic circuits is that a small loop of resistive metal can have a current flowing in it in the absence of any… Continue reading »
Dr. Steve Maxwell – NIST – Gaithersburg, MD Title: “Dynamics of a sodium spinor condensate” In the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, we have an ongoing experimental and theoretical effort to understand the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates of atomic sodium in an… Continue reading »
Prof. Jorge Moreno – Haverford College Title: “Do mergers of dark matter halos trigger quasars?” Quasars are extremely bright objects whose light was emitted when the Universe was much younger than today. Some of these objects shine more than all the stars in their host galaxies, which is why we… Continue reading »
Prof. Alain Laederach, Department of Biomedical Sciences & School of Public Health – SUNY Albany Title: “Identifying RNA folding through kinetic model enumeration” Large RNA molecules are known to fold through multiple parallel pathways to achieve their functional conformation. These pathways include stable intermediate structures that we identify using our… Continue reading »
Prof. Laura Cadonati – University of Massachusetts, Amherst Title: “LIGO and its progress towards gravitational wave astronomy” The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has the ambitious goal of the first direct detection of gravitational waves, tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by accelerating masses, as predicted by General… Continue reading »
Prof. Jonathan Friedman – Amherst College Title: “Relaxation and Tunneling in Single-Molecule Magnets” A single-molecule magnet is – true to its name – a magnet composed of a single molecule. The magnetic moment of such a system shows hysteresis like a classical magnet, yet it can tunnel between different orientation… Continue reading »
Prof. Christina (Reynolds) Dunn ’97 – Bennington College Title: “Creating the Giant: Fabricating the Mirrors of the European Extremely Large Telescope” Abstract: A new generation of astronomical telescopes is taking shape, giants three or four times larger than the world’s current largest telescopes. Bringing these massive designs from theoretical possibility… Continue reading »
Prof. Anthony Dinsmore – University of Massachusetts Title: “How Crystals Form: Colloids as a Tool to Study Phase Transitions” Abstract: Freezing and melting of crystals are fascinating phenomena that are very common in nature yet difficult to study in the laboratory. Micron-sized particles suspended in solution (colloidal particles) serve as… Continue reading »
Dr. William Fairbrother – Brown University “Mapping Cis-Elements in the Genome: Development of high throughput binding assays to query nucleic acid/protein interactions” My research utilizes computational and experimental methods to understand the sequence determinants of gene expression. Mostly we are concerned with splicing and finding the cis-elements that modulate… Continue reading »
Prof. John Hunt – Columbia University Title: “Tales of two molecular machines” The talk will mix thermodynamics and protein structural dynamics to illustrate a range of physical / dynamic mechanisms employed by proteins mediating different very kinds of molecular processes. Continue reading »
Prof. Froney Crawford ’94 – Franklin and Marshall College “An Observational Test of a Pulsar Spin-down Model Using Radio Polarimetry” Pulsars are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that are typically modeled as spinning magnetic point dipoles that lose rotational kinetic energy to dipole radiation. However, the spin-down behavior that is… Continue reading »
S. Charles Doret ’02 – Harvard University “Look Ma – no lasers! Towards Bose-Einstein condensation of metastable helium via buffer gas cooling” Advances in the cooling and trapping of atoms and the achievement of quantum degeneracy in dilute atomic gases has led to new developments in many sub-fields of atomic… Continue reading »
Bethany Cobb ’02 – Yale University Title: “Outshining the Universe: the Mystery of Gamma-ray Bursts” Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been puzzling astronomers for decades. The 2004 launch of the Swift GRB satellite, with its onboard X-ray and UV/optical telescopes, was meant to help solve the mystery of GRBs. Over 200… Continue reading »
Professor Fred Strauch – Gettysburg College and NIST Title: “Perfect Quantum State Transfer with Superconducting Phase Qubits” In 1980, Tony Leggett argued that the validity of quantum mechanics at the macroscopic legel can and should be to experimental test. Verification would finally force us to accept the radical viewpoint that… Continue reading »
Sarah Nichols ’03 – Stony Brook University Title: “Chemistry with Lasers: Quantum Control in Molecular Systems” Femtosecond laser pulses can be shaped in time and frequency to control chemical reactions in molecules. Our group investigates dynamic resonances in the halomethane family of molecules from both experimental and computational perspectives. We… Continue reading »
Judy Karpen – Naval Research Lab “The Sun through new glasses: what’s hot in solar physics” We study the Sun for many reasons, from purely intellectual and aesthetic to pragmatic. As our nearest star, it is the best-observed example of stellar structure and evolution on a wide range of timescales. Continue reading »
Prof. Peter Collings – Swarthmore College “Chromonic Liquid Crystals: A New form of Soft Matter” The spontaneous aggregation of certain dyes into structures that form an aqueous-based liquid crystal represents a new form of soft matter, with properties and applications very different from conventional liquid crystals. Understanding the self-assembly process… Continue reading »
Prof. Ward Lopes – Mt. Holyoke College “The development of order in ultra-thin PS-PMMA diblock copolymer films” Systems with striped (smectic) symmetry abound in nature. Examples include, the stripes on a zebra fish, the patterns of lines in fingerprints, and the patterns formed in Rayleigh-Bernard convection. Knowledge of how two… Continue reading »
Prof. David Weiss – Pennsylvania State University “How to and why make a one-dimensional gas” Abstract: I will explain the physics of 1D Bose gases, and describe experiments that confirm the longstanding exact theory. I will then describe how we create quantum Newton’s cradles, a more perfect version of the… Continue reading »
Prof. Prof. Ioana Niculescu – James Madison University “Large Bjorken x: Convergence Point for High and Medium Energy Physics” Over the last thirty years or so nucleon structure functions have been measured over a wide range of x and Q2. However the region x>0.6, where a single quark carries most… Continue reading »
Dr. Ana Jofre – National Institute of Standards and Technology “HYDROSOMES: Optically trapped femtoliter containers for single molecule studies” I will discuss a novel technique for creating, manipulating, and combining femtoliter volume chemical containers. Possible uses include creating controlled chemical reactions involving small quantities of reagent, and studying the dynamics… Continue reading »
Dr. Elizabeth Juarros – University of Connecticut Title: “Polar Molecules in the Ultracold Realm” Dipole-dipole forces dominate the interactions in an electrically polarized gas of heteronuclear diatomic molecules. These polar molecules may provide an excellent means with which to explore controlled chemical reactions, to search for physics beyond the standard… Continue reading »
Brian Gerke ’99- University of California, Berkeley “Nearly Normal Galaxies in a Preposterous Universe” Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929, the study of cosmology has led to many unexpected, perpelexing and fascinating results. Eighty years later, we are on the verge of explaining the… Continue reading »
Dr. Douglas Martin – Brandeis University “Structure and function of kinesin: a fluorescent look at a molecular motor” Molecular motors are proteins which use chemical energy available in the cell to do mechanically useful work. These macromolecules are involved in processes such as muscle contraction, intracellular transport and cell division. Continue reading »
Prof. David Cohen – Swarthmore College “X-ray Emission from Massive Stars” The strong X-ray emission from the most massive stars in the Galaxy was a surprising discovery of the first generation of X-ray telescopes in the late 1970s. Massive stars, unlike the Sun, are not supposed to have a magnetic… Continue reading »
Prof. Seth Major – Hamilton College “Quantum Gravity: Is it Physics?” Quantum gravity is purported to be the theory which underlies both quantum theory and general relativity. I will introduce the subject, emphasizing recent results of one approach to the problem which suggest that spatial geometry is discrete. Such discrete… Continue reading »
Prof. M. Cristina Marchetti – Syracuse University “Hydrodynamics and soft physics: from complex fluids to living cells” Historically the term hydrodynamics was synonymous with fluid mechanics and referred to the study of the dynamics of fluids in motion under specified boundary conditions. Today hydrodynamics denotes the description of the collective… Continue reading »
Prof. Mihai Stoiciu – Williams College Mathematics Dept. “Spectral Theory of Random Schrodinger Operators” We will give a brief introduction to the mathematical theory of random Schrodinger operators. These operators show quite unusual spectral behavior. If the disorder is large enough, then the random Schrodinger operators have dense point spectrum… Continue reading »
David Santiago – Stanford University On The Existence of Roton Excitations in Bose Einstein Condensates: Signature of Proximity to a Mott Insulating Phase Within the last decade, artificially engineered Bose Einstein Condensation has been achieved in atomic systems. Bose Einstein Condensates are superfluids just like bosonic Helium is and… Continue reading »
Prof. William Loinaz – Amherst College “Peering Beyond the Standard Model” The Standard Model of elementary particles and their interactions has served well for about thirty years (and generated numerous Nobel prizes), but its time is running out. I’ll review the Standard Model and discuss some near-term prospects for discovering… Continue reading »
Prof. L. Mahadevan – Harvard University – Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences “Water Movements in Soft Materials: from Passive Gels to Active Plants” Water infiltrated materials such as gels, cells and tissues show an unusually rich phenomenology of material behavior. I will explore some facets of this in the… Continue reading »
Joint Physics, Astronomy & Mathematics colloquium Prof. Kristopher Tapp – Assistant Prof. of Mathematics – Williams College “Yang-Mills Connections” Yang-Mills Connections are important in particle physics, differential geometry, and 4-dimensional topology. In this background talk, I will intuitively and rigorously describe bundles, connections, and the Yang-Mills equations. Continue reading »
Prof. Elena Caceres – Brown University “String Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics” String Theory has long been the best candidate for a unified theory of physics. Unfortunately, its lack of predictive power and its abstract nature made it more of a beautiful mathematical construction than a theory relevant to our physical… Continue reading »
Prof. Jason Zimba ’91 – Bennington College “Go Pistons!” In thermodynamics courses, we spend the vast majority of our instructional time talking about slow, reversible processes. But couldn’t we also learn a few things by thinking in a general way about very fast processes? In this talk, we’ll look at… Continue reading »
Prof. Gordon Jones ’89 – Hamilton College “3He-based Neutron Polarizers” Highly polarized 3He can be used as a spin filter to polarize a broad energy spectrum of neutrons. This capability will become increasingly important as new pulsed neutron sources come online over the next six years. This talk will discuss… Continue reading »
Prof. Jonathan Friedman – Amherst College “Single-Molecule Nanomagnets: Tunneling, Interference and Quantum Computing” Single-molecule magnets are ideal systems in which to study quantum phenomena on the mesoscopic scale. Composed of a handful of magnetic ions, they straddle the fence between the classical and quantum worlds, showing hysteresis effects characteristic of… Continue reading »
Dr. Alan Walton – University of Cambridge/Cavendish Laboratory “From Babbling Brooks to Sonoluminescence; the Physics of Bubbbles in Liquids” We are all familiar with the sounds produced by babbling brooks, dripping taps and boiling kettles. In fact, each of these sounds originates from gas (or vapour) bubbles present in the… Continue reading »
Prof. Phillip Gould – University of Connecticut “Laser Cooled Atoms: Collisions at 10^-8 eV” Ultracold atoms have found use in a variety of applications, ranging from atomic clocks to Bose-Einstein condensation to trace analysis. Collisions, both elastic and inelastic, become increasingly important at high atomic densities. I will describe unique… Continue reading »
Dr. Leonidas Pantelidis – Swarthmore College “Dynamics of the Heisenberg Model” I will give a brief general description of the Heisenberg Model (HM). Then, I will immediately digress in order to outline the basic ideas of classical and quantum mechanics! Also, I will introduce the nomenclature that I will be… Continue reading »
Yevgeniya V. Zastavker, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Physics Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering “Spiraling Into Gallstone Disease” Scientists have been fascinated for decades with the ability of nature to form self-assembled structures of various configurations. One such configuration is a spiral or a helix. The (double) helical… Continue reading »
Rebecca Christianson – Harvard University “Crystallization of Two-Component Colloidal Mixtures” When two different sizes of hard-sphere colloid are mixed together, the particles can crystallize into a joint structure. The kinetics of the formation of this structure will be affected by the stoichiometry of the system. This can provide a model… Continue reading »
Prof. Brett Fadem – Colby College “Putting the Squeeze on Nuclear Matter” My talk will concentrate on the nature of nuclear matter under extreme conditions, such as those that might have existed microseconds after the Big Bang. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) allows us to recreate such conditions in… Continue reading »
Prof. James Valles – Brown University “Manipulating Cells with Static Magnetic Fields” The materials in cells are primarily diamagnetic and thus, respond weakly to magnetic fields. Nevertheless, magnetic fields are available that are sufficiently intense to align biopolymers such as microtubules and biomolecular assemblies such as cell membranes. In addition,… Continue reading »
Nadya Mason – Harvard University “Nanotubes and the Electronics of Small Scale Structures” What happens to physics when we shrink stuff down? Can we measure the transition from atomic to macroscopic behavior in materials? In this talk, I will approach these questions by discussing transport experiments on small, mesoscopic structures… Continue reading »
Prof. Enrique J. “Kiko” Galvez – Colgate University Title: “Manifestations of Geometric Phase” “The Orbital Angular Momentum of Light” In recent years a new type of light beams has brought a lot of excitement to optical physics. Optical beams in high-order modes can propagate containing a phase singularity or… Continue reading »
Saturday April 12, 2003 1:00-3:00 PM Workshop A: “Chaos,” Robert Hilborn, Amherst College This workshop will provide an introduction to nonlinear dynamics and chaos at the introductory physics level. We will make use of simple mathematical models and simple experiments to illustrate the basic physics of this field. We… Continue reading »
Spring 2003 Joint Meeting of the New England Sections of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers April 11 – 12, 2003 Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts Themes: Quantum Bits Ultrafast Pulses Beyond the Visible Spectrum Teaching Physics Friday, April 11… Continue reading »
Spring 2003 Joint Meeting of the New England Sections of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers Friday & Saturday, April 11-12, 2003 Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts The Williams College Department of Physics will host the NES/APS and NES/AAPT meeting in the… Continue reading »
Dr. Susan Ginsberg – American Physical Society “From Lewis and Clark to Nanotechnology: How Science Policy REALLY Works” America’s science policy is determined by the President and the Congress of the United States. At least that’s what the civics textbooks would have us believe. In reality, decisions about science budgets… Continue reading »
Dr. Benjamin Schumacher – Kenyon College “Entropy, Randomness and the Physics of Computation” Computers are physical devices, and computations must be physical processes. Anyone who has used a laptop computer on an actual lap knows that computers produce waste heat. How much of this thermodynamic irreversibility is really necessary, and… Continue reading »
Michael Zuker, Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, February 1, 2002. Sponsored by Physics, Biology, & Computer Science departments. “Algorithms and Statistics for Nucleic Acid Secondary Structure Prediction” Secondary structures (foldings) for single-stranded nucleic acids can be predicted for single sequences, or for groups of homologous sequences that can… Continue reading »
Prof. Mark Trodden – Syracuse University “Modern Cosmology and the Building Blocks of the Universe” Let’s face it; the universe is really, really big! If we want to understand it, we need to know about the physics on very large scales. On the other hand, I think we’d all agree… Continue reading »
Prof. Humphrey Maris – Brown University “The Fission of the Electron” Quantum mechanics provides an extremely successful method for the calculation of the energy levels and other properties of physical systems. However, from the earliest days of quantum theory there has been controversy about the interpretation of the theory and… Continue reading »
Julia Steinberger – MIT “Trapping and Probing Ultracold Hydrogenic Atoms” The Ultracold Hydrogen Group at MIT is starting it’s third decade of experimental investigations. We confine hydrogen in a cryo-magnetic trap, and use forced evaporation to attain the ultracold regime of Bose Einstein condensation. We probe the atomic gas using… Continue reading »
Prof. Frank Moscatelli – Swarthmore College “NIST F2 – The Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock” The laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms is a field with much ongoing activity worldwide. Many fundamental questions in physics have been impacted by this relatively new area of research. The 1997 Nobel Prize in… Continue reading »
Prof. David S. Citrin ’85 – Washington State University “How Fast Can Semiconductors Emit Light? Exciton Polaritons in Low-Dimensional Systems” How long does it take an electron and hole in a semiconductor to recombine and emit a photon via spontaneous emission? The ultimate speed at which semiconductors can emit light… Continue reading »
Prof. Priyan Dias – University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka “Constructing a Philosophy of Engineering” Although the Philosophy of Science is now a well-established discipline, there is litte if any literature on the Philosophy of Engineering. This research attempts to draw out the relevance of four 20th century philosophers to… Continue reading »