News

Physics Hosts Visiting Students from Kuang Yaming Honors School, Nanjing University

In the week of August 26, the Physics department hosted a visit by 12 students and their faculty leaders from Kuang Yaming Honors School, an honors college in natural sciences from Nanjing University. Among the 12 students, 5 are physics majors, 6 chemistry majors, and 1 math major. During this visit, the students attended presentations by chairs of Chemistry (Prof. Steve Craig), Math (Prof. Harold Layton) and Physics (Prof. Haiyan Gao) introducing the three departments. The students also attended research… read more »

Dr. Kevin Finelli, First Duke Grad Student to Defend Thesis on ATLAS

On August 21, 2013, Dr. Kevin Finelli successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, Duke's first Ph.D. thesis analyzing the data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Dr. Finelli’s thesis developed and employed a novel technique, originally developed for CDF by Prof. Mark Kruse, his former grad student Dr. Sebastian Carron, postdoc Dr. Mircea Coca, and senior scientist Doug Benjamin to simultaneously extract the production cross-sections of… read more »

Meet the Staff: Nancy Morgans

The Physics Department is happy to welcome Nancy Morgans as our new Assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies. Nancy has worked at Duke in a variety of student services roles administering undergraduate and graduate studies programs in nursing, environmental science and policy, ecology, and neuroscience since 1994, earning her Masters degree in library science at NCCU along the way. Nancy is the point person for graduate student payroll, general questions about graduate study requirements, graduate… read more »

Physics Professors Recognized for Teaching by Students in 2012-2013 Academic Year

During the fall semester 2012 in the categories of Quality of Course and/or Intellectual Stimulation, Prof. Josh Socolar's PHY 264L: Optics and Modern Physics' course evaluations were among the top 5% of all undergraduate instructors at Duke for a medium class (29 - 59 students). During the fall semester 2012 in the categories of Quality of Course and/or Intellectual Stimulation, Prof. Dan Gauthier's  PHY 621L: Advanced Optics'… read more »

Chandrasekharan's Article on Fermion Bag Approach Featured on the Cover of European Physical Journal A

Prof. Shailesh Chandrasekharan was invited last year to write a review article on his new fermion bag approach to fermion lattice field theories. The article was recently published in the "Topical issue on lattice field theory methods in hadron and nuclear physics" of the European Physical Journal A. One of the figures from Chandrasekharan's article was chosen to be the cover page (shown below). The full article can be found here.   read more »

Alum Koskinen Nominated Head of IRS

President Barack Obama has nominated alumni John Koskinen (Duke, 1961) as head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You can read the article "Koskinen nominated to head IRS" on The Chronicle's website here. Koskinen was recently featured on our news site. You can read the article "Distinguished Alumnus John Koskinen Looks Back Over Varied Career" here. read more »

New Results from T2K Conclusively Show Muon Neutrinos Transform to Electron Neutrinos!

Photo: A 3D view of a candidate electron-neutrino event in the Super-Kamiokande detector.   July 19th, 2013: Today at the European Physical Society meeting in Stockholm, the international T2K collaboration announced definitive observation of muon neutrino to electron neutrino transformation. In 2011, the collaboration announced the first indication of this process, a new type of neutrino oscillation.  At that time, there was less than a 1% chance that the result could have been due to a… read more »

Students from China’s Shandong University Spend a Year with Duke Physics

“Life here is really busy, but colorful,” says Xiaqing Li, one of five physics majors from Shandong University in China who spent the 2012-2013 academic year at Duke. The students lived on West Campus and took physics classes, electives, and did independent study research. While the five students had five different experiences, they all agree they enjoyed choosing their own classes and schedules, being immersed in a foreign culture, and experiencing new ways of learning. “I think it’s good to study abroad… read more »

Gauthier & Kim Win MURI Competition

On May 31, 2013, the Department of Defense announced the winners of the annual Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) competition. The project, entitled "Fundamental research on wavelength-agile high-rate quantum key distribution (QKD) in a marine environment," was selected for funding by the Office of Naval Research.  This project is lead by Prof. Paul Kwiat from the University of Illinois - Urbanna-Champaign and includes researchers from the University of Arizona and Boston University, as well as… read more »

Farewell, Donna Ruger

Today we bid farewell to our Assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies, Donna Ruger, as she retires from Duke University after 28 years of service. Donna came to Duke in July 1985 and began working in the Physics Department in March 1993. The department threw her a farewell party on Wednesday, May 22, 2013. The event was attended by faculty, staff, students, Donna's family as well as past co-workers who returned to bid her adieu. Donna will be very missed here in Physics but we wish her well in the… read more »

Curtarolo's Group Wins MURI Competition, Grant

Prof. Stefano Curtarolo and his group have won the competition for the MURI topic#20 "Replacing Strategic Elements in DoD Materials"  for the proposal "Topological decompositions and spectral sampling algorithms for element substitution in critical technologies." Instead of discovering novel compounds, the group proposed to explore "mechanisms of phase decompositions" to reproduce functionalities instead of chemistry. Curtarolo is the PI on this new grant. read more »

Profs. Bass and Mueller Published in PRL

Profs. Steffen A. Bass and Berndt Mueller recently published an article in Physical Review Letters on the structure of the Quark-Gluon-Plasma, a state of ultra-high temperature and density matter created in nuclear collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider. The work was done in collaboration with Prof. Masayuki Asakawa of Osaka University, who is a frequent visitor to the Duke QCD group. The article can be found here. read more »

Unlocking the Diverse Dynamics of Large-Scale Networks

Thinking of energy grids, transportation graphs, and the brain, it becomes clear that networks are ubiquitous in nature and technology. The dynamics of networks is extremely difficult to grasp and exploit technologically because of large numbers of elements involved. A new experimental paradigm could now solve this issue. Recently, visiting graduate student David Rosin, post-doctoral research associate Damien Rontani, and Prof. Daniel Gauthier in the Quantum Electron Lab… read more »

Grad Student Laskaris Published in PRL

Graduate student Georgios Laskaris recently published a paper in Physical Review Letter titled "First measurements of spin-dependent double-differential cross sections and the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn integrand from  3He(g,n)pp at incident photon energies of 12.8 and 14.7 MeV" under the supervision of his advisor Prof. Haiyan Gao together with the Capture Group at TUNL, other collaborators from Duke and elsewhere, and several theory collaborators from Europe. This is the first paper in… read more »

Han Invited to Co-Edit Y. Nambu Book Update

The World Scientific Publishing has decided to publish an updated and expanded version of the book "Broken Symmetry: Collected Papers of Y. Nambu" and asked Prof. Emeritus Moo-Young Han to be one of two editors for the new book. The original book was published in 1955 and since then Nambu has received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics. Han and T. Eguchi of Tokyo are invited to be the editors for the new book. Han is also asked to publish an updated and expanded version of his book "A Story of Light," one of… read more »

Dean Katsouleas Teaches Mechanics Recitation Section

Prof. and Dean Tom Katsouleas, Dean of the Pratt School of Eng- ineering, is in constant motion as he teaches a Tuesday afternoon recitation section for Physics 151. One minute he’s scribbling equations and drawing graphs on the blackboard; the next he’s singing an old Crosby, Stills and Nash song to help students remember that long waves travel faster than short ones. Every 15 minutes or so, he assigns a practice problem and strides out among the tables to interact with students one-on-one. Even though… read more »

Kruse Speaks at First IAS-CERN Workshop

Prof. Mark Kruse gave a talk at the 1st IAS-CERN Workshop on Particle Physics and Cosmology at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore on March 25. He overviewed recent results from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and discussed what is next in particle physics after the discovery of the Higgs boson. Kruse was subequently featured in an article in Singapore's Sunday Times. You can read it here. read more »

New Assistant Professor Phil Barbeau Searches for Rare Events

Physicist Phil Barbeau builds detectors to look for rare events in nuclear and particle physics. He says, “We use very standard particle-detection techniques that are taken to the extreme. In general, all of these experiments are so sensitive that a single fingerprint left behind on the detector can blind it.” Barbeau, currently a post-doc at Stanford, will be joining the Duke Physics faculty and the Triangle University Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) on August 1. He searches for neutrinoless double beta decay,… read more »

Postdoc Esterline Published in PRL

James Esterline, a research associate at TUNL, recently published the results of his thesis work (“Analyzing Power Ay(q) of n-3He Elastic Scattering between 1.60 and 5.54 MeV”) in PRL together with thesis advisor Prof. Werner Tornow and two collaborating theoreticians from the University of Lisbon. This work involved the tandem accelerator at TUNL. You can read the article online here. read more »