Department of Physics
Jiani Huang has been awarded as a Scholar in the prestigious John T. Chambers Scholar program for 2015-2017 in the Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics (FIP) at the Pratt School of Engineering. Huang was nominated by her advisor Prof. Maiken Mikkelsen. The John T. Chambers Fellowship Program has been a part of FIP since 2001 and provides monetary support for graduate student recipients. Congratulations to Jiani! read more about Grad Student Huang Receives Chambers Sholarship »
Prof. Ayana Arce, postdoc Enrique Kajomovitz and graduate student Lei Li, members of the High Energy Physics research group, have been investigating mysterious features of the ATLAS data from the Large Hadron Collider. Recently they made their results public. Below are links to two news articles with more information. Symmetry Magazine's "Something goes bump in the data" The Guardian's "Something to watch for in the new data from the Large Hadron Collider" read more about HIgh Energy Physics Research Group Investigates ATLAS Data from the LHC »
On Friday, July 10, Trinity College announced that Prof. Warren S. Warren will be appointed as the new Chair of the Department of Physics beginning September 1, 2015. Prof. Warren is a James B. Duke Professor with appointments in Physics, Chemistry, Radiology and Biomedical Engineering and is also the Director of the Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging. See Warren's faculty profile here and visit the Warren Group page here. Congratulations and welcome! read more about Prof. Warren to Chair Duke Physics »
Chris Flower, a Physics undergraduate student working in Prof. Haiyan Gao's group, was selected as a 2015-2016 Undergraduate American Nuclear Scholar by the American Nuclear Society. Flower will be recognized at the ANS national chapter meeting in San Antonio later this year. read more about Undergraduate Flower is 2015-2016 Undergraduate American Nuclear Scholar »
Profs. Henry Greenside and Roxanne Springer have been recognized for receiving course evaluations in the top 5% of all undergraduate courses in the categories of Quality of Course and/or Intellectual Stimulation for small classes (Springer) or mid-size classes (Greenside). Greenside taught PHY 162: Fundamentals of Physics II and this is his third year in a row receiving this distinction. Springer taught PHY 153: Applications of Physics. From the office of Lee Baker, Dean for Academic… read more about Profs. Greenside and Springer Receive Course Evaluations in the Top 5% »
Sargis Karapetyan, a Physics graduate student in Prof. Nicolas Buchler's lab was featured in DukeToday for his paper "Redox rhythm reinforces the circadian clock to gate immune response." Read the DukeToday article "Dual Internal Clocks Keep Plant Defenses on Schedule" here and read the paper on Nature's website here. read more about Grad Student Karapetyan's Research Featured on Nature and DukeToday »
The Physics Department has selected graduate students Ron Malone and Andrew Seredinski for the Mary Creason Memorial Award for 2015. Their performances as Teaching Assistants in the introductory laboratory courses has been exemplary and highly appreciated by their colleagues in the department. Certificates will be presented to Malone and Seredinksi at the Annual Physics Department Picnic on Saturday, August 22. More information on this award can be found on the Fellowships page here. read more about Grad Students Malone and Seredinski Selected for 2015 Mary Creason Memorial Award »
The Physics Department has nominated graduate students Kevin Holway and Xiaojun Yao for the AAPT Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 2015. Their performances as Teaching Assistants have been exemplary and highly appreciated by their colleagues in the department. With the award, AAPT also offers the students one year of free membership. Certificates will be presented to Holway and Yao at the Annual Physics Department Picnic on Saturday, August 22. More information on this award can be… read more about Grad Students Holway and Yao Nominated for 2015 AAPT Outstanding TA Award »
Mathematics and Physics Prof. Jianfeng Lu has been named the recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The theme of this award is to develop advanced computational methods for quantum and statistical mechanics. See details along with Lu's abstract here. read more about Prof. Lu Receives NSF CAREER Award »
Prof. Warren S. Warren was featured in a Pratt School of Engineering news release about his work with pump-probe spectroscopy that has aided the fields of both medicine and art. Read the article "A New Way of Looking at Melanomas and Renaissance Paintings" here. read more about Prof. Warren Refines Laser Technique for Use in Fields of Dermatology and Art »
Prof. Phil Barbeau, assistant professor in Physics, has been awarded a Department of Energy Early Career Research Award from the Office of High Energy Physics. The program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in thier careers and also stimulates research careers in the areas supported by the DOE Office of Science. Barbeau is one of 44 early career selectees this year; there were 27 from universities and 17 from national laboratories. The grant will help… read more about Prof. Barbeau Receives DOE Early Career Research Award »
Profs. Maiken Mikkelsen and David R. Smith with others, including researchers Gleb Akselrod and Thang Ba Hoang have had a new paper published in Nano Letters. You can read Leveraging Nanocavity Harmonics for Control of Optical Processes in 2D Semiconductors" here. read more about Profs. Mikkelsen and Smith with Others Publish Paper in Nano Letters »
On April 23, 2015 during the undergraduate poster session, the 2015 inductees of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) were announced. SPS mentor and Prof. Phil Barbeau shared some history: SPS at Duke is the the second oldest SPS chapter in the country. Barbeau also presented the six new members with certificates and invited them to sign their names in a book kept since 1925. This book contains the names of those undergraduate members of the Physics Department that were inducted in the Sigma Pi Sigma, the… read more about Society of Physics Students 2015 Inductees »
During the April 23rd undergraduate poster session, the 2015 Daphne Chang Memorial Award recipient was announced. The award is presented each year to students who excel in undergraduate research in the department. Prof. Steffen A. Bass shared the history of Daphne and the meaning behind the award, which may be read here. This year's award goes to junior Melody Lim. Congratulations to Lim on this honor! read more about 2015 Daphne Chang Memorial Award »
The annual undergraduate poster session was held on Wednesday, April 23, 2015. Eleven students displayed and presented their research. Awards for First, Second and Third place were determined by a panel of judges and presented by Director of Undergraduate Studies and Prof. Kate Scholberg. Third place prize was a tie between Katrina Miller and Lydia Thurman. Here they are proudly sharing the honor: Second prize went to Connor… read more about 2015 Undergraduate Poster Session »
As program chair of the 2015 April Meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, MD, Prof. Berndt Mueller had the pleasure of participating in a special dinner honoring the three plenary speakers of the Kavli Memorial session. The photo below shows (from left to right): John Mather (NASA - leader of the COBE experiment), Kate Kirby (CEO of the APS), Stuart Shapiro (Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Clifford Will (Univ. of Florida), and Prof. Mueller. In the plenary session on May 13 sponsored by… read more about Prof. Mueller Chairs APS Meeting, Dines with Plenary Speakers »
In February, an international group of physicists came together to form a proto-collaboration to build the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment. A follow-up to the currently operating Super-Kamiokande experiment, Hyper-Kamiokande would enclose almost a megaton of water and be more than twenty times larger than its predecessor. Hyper-Kamiokande is designed to study neutrino oscillations, astrophysical sources of neutrinos such as supernova and the stability of matter. At the ceremony, which was attended by both scientists and the… read more about Prof. Walter Represents the U.S. at Founding of Hyper-Kamiokande Collaboration »
In the field of physics, it’s considered de rigueur to complete a postdoctoral position, or postdoc, after earning a PhD and before beginning a faculty job. “It’s expected that you’re going to broaden beyond your PhD work,” says Duke Physics Interim Chair and Prof. Dan Gauthier. “Search committees want to see to what extent you were able to jump into another lab and another environment, and to what extent you’re able to come up to speed quickly and start to generate publications. If you do well at… read more about The Postdoc Experience in the Duke Physics Department »
Recently Prof. Haiyan Gao gave a plenary talk on "Proton - a fascinating relativistic many-body system - remains puzzling'' at the April APS meeting in Baltimore in the session: Session W1: Plenary Session III: Probing our Limits of Knowledge. Watch the talk on YouTube here. Additionally, Prof. Gao was interviewed by Deutschlandradio, the German equivalent of NPR, about her APS talk. Here you can see the written piece and hear the radio piece, both in German, although pieces of Gao's voice can be heard on… read more about Prof. Gao Spoke at April APS Meeting, Featured on Deutschlandradio »
Prof. Maiken Mikkelsen, with others, has been published in Nature Communications. Read the paper "Real-time tunable lasing fram plasmonic nanocavity arrays" online here. read more about Prof. Mikkelsen Published in Nature Communications »
David Rosin, who did his PhD research with Prof. Daniel Gauthier and received his degree from the Technical University in Berlin (co-supervised by Eckehard Schoell there), recently won prizes for his dissertation. He won the Springer Dissertation Award and his thesis was published by Springer (available on Amazon). He also competed and co-won the Dissertation Prize of the German Physical Society. He was one of four finalists for this prize. read more about Rosin Awarded Prizes for Dissertation »
Graduate student Georgios Laskaris successfully defended his thesis "Photodisintegration of 3He with Double Polarizations" on April 6th, 2015. Laskaris has been a member of the Medium Energy Physics group of Duke University since the winter of 2008 and performed all of his thesis experiments at the HIgS facility of TUNL under the supervision of Prof. Haiyan Gao. Laskaris will join Prof. Giorgio Gratta's group at Stanford University in Neutrino Physics. read more about Laskaris Successfully Defends Thesis »
Prof. Daniel Gauthier's recently published paper "High-dimensional quantum cryptography with twisted light" was discussed on physicsworld.com. Read the article "'Twisted light' gives quantum cryptography a boost" here. Prof. Gauthier's paper with others was published in New Journal of Physics and can be read here. read more about Prof. Gauthier's Paper Discussed on physicsworld.com »
SPIN2014: The International Symposium on Spin Physics, of which Prof. Haiyan Gao was a large part, was featured in a thorough February article of CERN Courier. You can read "Spin goes Chinese" by clicking here. read more about SPIN2014 Detailed in CERN Courier »
Two papers by the Super-Kamiokande collaboration documenting analyses by postdoc Alex Himmel and former postdoc Tarek Akiri, both from the neutrino group, were highlighted on the front page of the Physical Review D March 25, 2015. The first paper "Limits on sterile neutrino mixing using atmospheric neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande" Phys. Rev. D 91, 052019 (2015) sets new limits on hypothetical new non-interacting neutrino types. This was an analysis undertaken by Dr. Himmel… read more about Super-Kamiokande Papers by Duke Postdocs Highlighted by Physical Review D »
Undergraduate Connor Hann was designated a Faculty Scholar for the Class of 2016 by the Academic Council and its Faculty Scholars Committee. This is the highest honor Duke University faculty can award undergraduates. Hann's advisors are Profs. Shailesh Chandrasekharan and Joshua Socolar. He is currently working with Prof. Chandrasekharan on trying to understand the origin of the sign problem in frustrated quantum spin systems. Such systems are known to be at the heart of… read more about Undergraduate Hann Awarded Faculty Scholar for Class of 2016 »
Graduate student Sean Finch successfully defended his thesis "Double-Beta Decay of 96Zr and Double-Electron Capture of 156Dy to Excited Final States" on March 25, 2015. Finch's advisor is Prof. Calvin Howell. read more about Finch Successfully Defends Thesis »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau has been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure, effective April 1. Prof. Charbonneau’s outstanding scholarship in multiple areas of soft matter chemistry and physics, and especially in the nature of the glass transition, is having a great impact in his scientific community across the globe, just as his creative and energetic teaching and service contributions have had a tremendous impact here on campus. He is in Paris at the moment (where he is broadening his pedagogical impact, for those who… read more about Prof. Charbonneau Promoted to Associate Professor »
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal was recently invited to co-convene a three-week workshop at the Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology, titled "The Future of High Energy Physics." The workshop was hosted by the Institute of Advanced Study at HKUST. The theme of the workshop was the energy frontier in particle physics. After the discovery of the Higgs boson, the priorities at the energy frontier are the precise measurement of Higgs properties and searches for new physics. The existence of dark matter and the… read more about Prof. Kotwal Convenes "Future of HEP" Workshop in Hong Kong »
Prof. Al Goshaw's and his research group member and graduate student Mia Liu have recently made a measurement of one of the rarest processes observed in experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. They have observed the production of three electroweak bosons by using the full LHC Run 1 data set of proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 8 TeV. The final state consists of a W boson plus two high energy photons. This provides a test of the Standard Model's… read more about Goshaw and Liu Measure Rare Process at CERN »