The Duke Teaching Observatory was established in the fall of 2002 with funds from Provost of Arts and Sciences and the Physics Department. The Observatory is located in a clearing in the Duke Forest about 4.5 miles from West Campus. The observatory is an important part of the student experience in Physics 55 (Introductory Astronomy). Students visit the observatory three times each over the course of the semester, allowing small group work in which 3-4 students operate a telescope. Over the course of the term, students… read more about Ten Years Under the Stars »
When in need of a custom-designed tissue press, a mouse-exposure chamber, an umbilical cord blood collector, photoelastic disks, or almost any other apparatus made of metal or plastic, those in the know turn to the Duke Physics Instrument Shop. “We do all types of plastic and metals works,” says manager Bernie Jelinek. “We do welding, brazing, silver soldering, and a little bit of sheet metal. We do all types of machining—milling, turning, grinding.” The Instrument Shop, located on the bottom floor of the… read more about Two Great Places for Making Just About Anything: The Duke Physics Instrument Shop and the Staff Machine Shop »
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus using alpha-particle scattering experiments. The event was celebrated at CERN in Switzerland on November 15 by an afternoon colloquium, which was webcast live worldwide. The full program of talks can be found here. Prof. Mark Kruse of Duke Physics closed the event with a talk on how Rutherford has inspired young physicists from New Zealand, where Rutherford was born, grew up and was… read more about Prof. Kruse Gives Invited Talk at Rutherford Centennial Colloquium at CERN, Geneva »
Submitted by Prof. Calvin Howell - The Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) is involved with activities associated with the Nuclear Science Merit Badge of the Boy Scouts of America. As part of this outreach to young people, TUNL offers science presentations, hands-on activities and tours of the research facilities that are appropriate for a wide age range (7th grade through high school students). This fall (September 10, 2011) Boy Scout Troop 101 from Asheville, NC visited TUNL as part of their… read more about TUNL Outreach Activities Update »
On November 2, about fifty people attended the Physics Department's first Music Recital, which provided an opportunity for students, staff, faculty, and friends of the Physics Department to perform a variety of pieces spanning classical music to folk music to electronic music to jazz. The recital was organized by Prof. Henry Greenside, who in talking with many students as the Director of Undergraduate Studies and with many physics colleagues realized that there were many talented and enthusiastic musicians… read more about Physics Department Holds First Music Recital »
Prof. Arlie Petters (primary appointment: Mathematics) was featured on Duke Research Blog in a story by Ashley Yeager "Prescription lens brings spinning black holes into focus." You can read the story by clicking here. read more about Petters Featured on Duke Research Blog »
NOTE: SOME LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN Graduate student Yingyi Zhang has won the People’s Choice Award in the 2011 Mahato Memorial Event Photo Contest sponsored by the Pratt School of Engineering and the Duke Graduate School. Zhang’s photo shows the red fluorescent light emitted by a cloud of atoms cooled nearly to absolute zero. The Mahato contest, “Envisioning the Invisible,” was established to honor the memory of Abhijit Mahato, an engineering student at Duke who was murdered in… read more about Graduate Student Yingyi Zhang Wins Award in Mahato Photo Contest »
In September, graduate student Abhiji Mehta travelled to Lausanne, Switzerland to attend a workshop on Continuum Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) Methods sponsored by CECAM (the Centre européen de calcul atomique et moléculaire) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His travel was supported by an NSF travel grant from the Materials Computation Center at UIUC and by CECAM. At this workshop, Mehta was able to meet QMC experts and learn about several techniques that he can apply to his research.… read more about Grad student Mehta travels to Switzerland for conference, visit to CERN »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau has a new paper in Physical Review Letters titled "Glass Transition and Random Close Packing above Three Dimensions." Click here to read the abstract. Click here to read an article on the Duke Research website about Charbonneau's paper. read more about Prof. Charbonneau published in Physical Review Letters »
At right: Will Sager on the R/V Marcus G. Langseth research ship with Honolulu in the background, just before heading out to Shatsky Rise in the Pacific, July 2010. When Will Sager was majoring in physics at Duke, he wanted to go into astronomy, but an intro geology course opened up a new vista. “I took Geo 101 at Duke and it was really interesting,” Sager says. “The professor said to me, ‘You ought to consider geophysics,’ and I said, ‘What’s that?’” Today, Sager is a… read more about Alum Uses Remote Sensing to Make Sense of Ocean Basins »
John Thomas, Fritz London Professor Emeritus, has won the Jesse W. Beams Award, given by the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society for significant and meritorious research. The award was presented on October 21, 2011, at the conference banquet of the 78th Annual Meeting of SESAPS in Roanoke, Virginia. “It’s very exciting,” Thomas says, explaining that he was told that he won the award “for a combination of broad contributions to optical, molecular and atomic physics as well as my current… read more about Prof. Thomas Wins Beams Award »
Zeng with the CDF DetectorProf. Ashutosh Kotwal's graduate student, Yu Zeng, has received the Universities Research Association's Visiting Scholarship for his research on the CDF experiment at Fermilab. He is pursuing the world's most precise measurement of the W boson mass. This measurement will provide a stringent test of the Higgs mechanism in the Standard Model of particle physics, even as the direct search for the Higgs boson is ongoing at LHC and Fermilab. read more about Grad Student Zeng Receives Visiting Scholarship »
The Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab was shut down on September 30. The experiments recording the collision data, CDF and D-zero ceased operation after more than twenty years of producing results that have significantly advanced our understanding of the universe. Chen Zhou, a Duke second-year graduate student, spent the summer at the CDF experiment, funded by a Fermilab University Research Association fellowship. Chen was trained to be one of the expert operators of the CDF experiment, which… read more about Grad Student Zhou, One of Last Physicists at Controls of CDF Experiment »
In September Visiting Assistant Professor Hannah Petersen was selected by the Helmholtz Association in Germany to lead a Young Investigator Group. This program offers the possibility to young scientists within 2-6 years after having received their PhD degree to build their own research group. The funding over a 5-year period consists of a total sum of 1.25 million Euro (approximately $1.7M). The selection process is highly competitive. The candidates have to go through three rounds of interviews with… read more about Hannah Petersen Selected for Helmholtz Young Investigator program »
Prof. Albert Chang's work was featured in the Duke Today article "Scientists Observe How Superconducting Nanowires Lose Resistance-Free State." Click here to read the story. read more about Prof. Chang Featured in Duke Today »
At right: PhD student Abe Clark in the Behringer Lab During this past summer, five students, including a Duke undergraduate and four students from local high schools, worked in the Behringer Lab in the Department of Physics at Duke. Each student had an independent project, and was teamed with either Duke post-doc, Joshua Dijksman, or Duke Ph.D. student, Abe Clark. Colton Brown, a Duke Physics major, worked with Abe Clark on several projects. He… read more about Update on Students' Work in Behringer Lab »
Prof. Nicolas Buchler won the National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award "based on his innovative approach to study how individual cells can "learn" patterns from their environment." Read the full article in Duke Today here. read more about Buchler Receives NIH Director's New Innovator Award »
At right: Prof. Gao and her former Ph.D. student Xin Qian, currently a Millikan Fellow at Caltech. Xin gave an invited talk at this workshop. Prof. Haiyan Gao, the new chair of Duke Physics, is working on several fronts to encourage collaboration among physicists in American and China—particularly among physicists who study hadrons, particles that interact through the strong force. The time is ripe because students and young scientists in China are jumping at the chance to do… read more about Chinese-American Collaboration in Hadron Physics Bears Fruit »
In the past six months, four former students or post-docs of Prof. Robert Behringer have received tenure or other honors. They are as follows: Karen Daniels, NC State Corey O'Hern, Yale Jeff Olafsen and his wife Linda Blue, Baylor Matthias Sperl now has a permanent position as group leader in charge of a granular group at the DLR in Germany (their equivalent of NASA) Also, some slightly older news, Behringer's… read more about News from Prof. Behringer's former group members »
Prof. Harold Baranger is delighted to announce that his student and fourth year graduate student Huaixiu Zheng has won a prestigious Duke award: the John T. Chambers Scholar award of the Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics (FIP) which is part of the Pratt School of Engineering. Huaixiu's main work here at Duke is on a new area of quantum optics and condensed matter physics called "waveguide quantum-electrodynamics" (waveguide QED). The idea is to have photons (or some other kind of bosons)… read more about Huaixiu Zheng wins John T. Chambers Scholar Award »
Prof. Richard Palmer has shared his photos from the annual Duke Physics picnic that took place on Sunday, August 28th. See all the photos on our Flickr site here. read more about 2011 Physics Picnic Photos »
Prof. Harold Baranger has taken a visiting position called a "Chaire d'Excellence" at the Nanosciences Foundation in Grenoble France in order to develop a collaboration with Grenoble researchers on the topic "Correlations and Transport Far from Equilibrium at the Nanoscale." The position is for 3 years (June 1, 2011 to May 31, 2014) and involves spending 3 months per year in Grenoble. In addition, there is funding for a postdoc and for visits both ways--Grenoble researchers to Duke and… read more about Prof. Baranger, "Chaire d'Excellence" »
On June 6 students, postdocs and faculty members worked together to coordinate an outreach event for female high school students called "Physics for Females." Several Duke students, postdocs, staff, and professors volunteered to help with the event. The students were able to go on lab tours, hear a talk about special relativity and particle physics by Prof. Kate Scholberg, and play with physics toys and demos. The group hopes to hold a similar event next year. The event team included the following Duke… read more about Duke Physics hosts Physics for Females »
Duke's Research blog has posted an article about the ATLAS Zprime boson and Graviton search by Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal's team. The team recently submitted their paper on their findings to Physical Review Letters. You can read the article "Z-prime search may hurdle Higgs hunt" by Ashley Yeager here. Photo Credit: The Particle Zoo read more about Kotwal's team's research featured on Duke's Research blog »
Prof. David Smith received press on his Physics Review Letters' August publication with Yaroslav A. Urzhumov "Fluid Flow Control with Transformation Media." Read the Physics article "Leave No Trace" here. read more about David Smith in Physics »
Physics is a mature and evolving scientific discipline, which has witnessed many breakthroughs. In the 21st century, physics is poised for more discoveries and breakthroughs, many of which will come out of interdisciplinary research and teaching. In the last several years, faculty in our department have been working on better ways to articulate and present our work to prospective students, our undergraduate and graduate students, and others both inside and outside of Duke. The result is the following document, “Six Big… read more about The Duke University Physics Department: Six Big Questions »
The Department of Physics at Duke University invites applications and nominations for a tenure-track position at the assistant professor level in the area of experimental condensed matter physics, broadly defined. The appointment begins in fall 2012. The successful candidate should show a strong commitment to research and teaching. Send research and teaching statements, a CV, and the names and letters from three references to cmsearch at phy dot duke dot edu. Applications, including letters,… read more about Assistant Professor Position in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics at Duke »
The recent result of the T2K experiment has now been published in Physics Review Letters and was also selected for a Viewpoint article. Read the article "Indication of Electron Neutrino Appearance from an Accelerator-Produced Off-Axis Muon Neutrino Beam" here and the Viewpoint here. read more about T2K Result Published in PRL »
Graduate student Jon Mueller has received the Inaugural Best Student Presentation Award for his presentation at the annual Domestic Nuclear Detection (DNDO) Academic Research Initiative (ARI) Grantees Conference. April’s meeting of the DNDO was the first year that graduate students were able to deliver oral presentations on their research. The DNDO is a part of the United States Department of Homeland Security and it funds many types of research around the country, including projects at Duke’s HIGS facility… read more about Grad Student Mueller Wins DNDO Award »
As we start the new school year several faculty are beginning new positions in the department. This summer Prof. Dan Gauthier stepped down as Chairperson after a five year term and Prof. Richard Palmer stepped down as Director of Graduate Studies. On June 28, the Physics Department held a farewell party to recognize their efforts. On July 1, Prof. Haiyan Gao became the new Chair of the Physics Department and Prof. Shailesh Chandrasekharan is the new… read more about New Faculty Positions »