Department of Physics
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 »
Earlier this month Profs. Albert Chang and Haiyan Gao attended an extremely successful conference, the 7th Joint Meeting of Chinese Physicists Worldwide - International Conference on Physics Education and Frontier Physics. At the last plenary session on Education where Prof. Chang spoke, more than fifty high school students attended his very interesting and interactive lecture. The education program of this conference series has become more and more successful each year and Prof. Chang is… read more about Chang and Gao attend 7th Joint Meeting of Chinese Physicists Worldwide »
At the LHC, Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal is heading up the ATLAS experiment's research team on searches for Zprime bosons. In August this ATLAS group submitted a new paper on this research to Physical Review Letters. This is the world's most sensitive search for Zprime bosons, which are new kinds of particles predicted in theories of force unification. Prof. Kotwal's team has also searched for Gravitons, which are massive particles hypothesized to mediate the force of gravity and explain why gravity is so much… read more about New ATLAS paper submitted by Kotwal's team »
What’s an alumnus of the Duke Physics department doing as a post-doc in the sociology department at the University of Chicago? Ask Jacob Foster ’03, who is doing just that. “Many of the most interesting and challenging problems for people who want to work on complex systems are in the social sciences,” he says. Foster, who earned his PhD in physics from the University of Calgary, adds, “The training I got at Duke and at Calgary put me in a pretty good position to act as an interpreter between the two… read more about Duke Alum Works at the Intersection of Physics and Sociology »
Seven undergraduates from the Duke Physics department spent time this summer working and learning at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland: Alex Bodel, Alejandro Cortese, Will DiClemente, Laura Dodd, Andrew Ferante, Josh Loyal, and Zongjin Qian. In addition four others did LHC-related research at Duke: Travis Byington, Zach Epstein, … read more about Duke Undergrads Spend Summer at LHC »
Alumna Sally Dawson (B.S. Physics and Mathematics, 1977) of Brookhaven National Laboratory was elected by APS members as the chair-elect of the nominating committee for the new term beginning January 1, 2012. The election results may be found here and Dr. Dawson's biography and statement here. read more about Alum Sally Dawson joins APS leadership team »
Prof. Haiyan Gao at PANIC11 | Photo courtesy of Justin Knight PhotographyThe 19th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC11) is taking place this week in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from Sunday July 24th through Friday July 29th 2011. PANIC2011 is special because it is also celebrating the centennial of the discovery of the atomic nucleus and the 150th anniversary of MIT. 600 or so physicists are at this conference from 35 countries and Duke has a strong presence… read more about Duke Physics at PANIC 2011 »
Prof. Daniel Gauthier was the General Co-Chair of the recent topical meeting of the Optical Society of America, Nonlinear Optics 2011 (NLO 2011), following his term at conference Program Co-Chair in 2009. The conference is usually held every two years on one of the islands of Hawai'i, where the 2011 meeting was the 10th time that it was held here. The location is ideal for fostering interactions, especially between scientists from the United States and the Pacific Rim countries. One highlight of the meeting… read more about Gauthier attends NLO 2011 »
Prof. Kate Scholberg and former Duke physics undergraduate Alvaro Chavarria (graduated 2007) attended a workshop excursion to Lübeck in Germany. Prof. Scholberg organized a session on phenomenology and detection strategies for supernova neutrinos at the HANSE 2011 (Hamburg Neutrinos from Supernova Explosions) workshop at DESY in Hamburg. Alvaro is now a graduate student at Princeton and is responsible for supernova neutrino monitoring for the Borexino experiment in Italy, and he also… read more about Scholberg and Chavarria attend HANSE 2011 »
In July Prof. Shailesh Chandrasekharan and postdoctoral associate Dr. Anyi Li traveled to Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe to attend the 2011 International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory. It is the biggest annual meeting for all the people who are doing lattice field theory calculations. 350 participants from all over the world have attended this year's conference. Prof. Chandrasekharan and Dr. Li presented their work on the novel developed algorithm which can efficiently simulate the fermionic… read more about Chandrasekharan and Li attend Lattice Field Theory Symposium »
The Dean of Natural Sciences, Robert Calderbank, traveled to CERN on July 12 to meet with members of the Duke ATLAS research group. The visit included tours of the ATLAS control room and an assembly laboratory used for the construction of tracking detectors. Dean Calderbank had an opportunity to learn about the Duke ATLAS research program in meetings with Duke students and senior scientists Andrea Bocci, Prof. Al Goshaw and Guem-Bong Yu. The excitement of… read more about Dean Calderbank visits CERN »
Le Luo earned his PhD in 2008 working with Prof. John Thomas. For the past three years, he has been working with Prof. Chris Monroe in the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland and NIST as a JQI post-doc fellow. Le Luo is now heading to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) as an assistant professor. He says, “I will start an AMO lab there and focus on cold atom physics and quantum information science.” read more about Update from Alum Le Luo »
Prof. Haiyan Gao's graduate student, Wangzhi Zheng, has co-published a paper in Physical Review A as a Rapid Communication. Physical Review A is a publication on atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Read the abstract at the Physical Review A website here. Zheng submitted an introduction to the paper, which we've shared below. From Wangzhi Zheng: Optically polarized Helium-3 gas has been widely used in many applications, such as neutron… read more about Graduate Student Zheng publishes paper in Phys. Rev A »
Prof. Daniel Gauthier has been named the Robert C. Richardson Professor of Physics. Read the article in Duke Today here. Prof. Gauthier is recognized for his research in experimental condensed matter physics, photonics, quantum optics, and nonlinear dynamics. The professorship is endowed by an anonymous gift to the university in honor of Dr. Richardson, who obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at Duke in 1966, and is currently the Floyd R. Newman Professor of Physics at Cornell… read more about Prof. Gauthier named Richardson Professor of Physics »
Duke's community of faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and research scientists have long been active in the experiments at CERN in Geneva. This archive is by no means comprehensive, but offers a handful of highlights of recent updates from Duke physicists working on (or working with topics related to) the LHC or ATLAS experiments. Click the link below read the list of news story highlights. Ashutosh Kotwal named co-leader of research group on ATLAS: Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been named… read more about Duke at CERN: Updates from 2010-2011 »
Compiled by Prof. Horst Meyer, May 13, 2011 After preparing the webpages of the Duke Physics Distinguished faculty, starting with that of Fritz London (1900-1954), I recorded and tabulated their weblog counts. In addition of F. London, the webpages include those of Hertha Sponer (1895-1968), Lothar Nordheim (1899-1985), Walter M. Nielsen (1901-1981), Walter Gordy (1909-1985), Henry W. Newson (1909-1978), William M. Fairbank (1917-1989), Harold W. Lewis (1917-2000) and L.awrence C. Biedenharn (1922-… read more about Weblog counts of Distinguished Physics Faculty »
Submitted by Prof. Henry Greenside, Director of Undergraduate Studies I would like to mention some highlights of achievements and events related to Duke's physics majors, to the graduating class of seniors, and to the physics major. Several physics majors won prestigious awards in the 2010-2011 academic time frame. Junior Vivek Bhattacharya, who is majoring in economics and physics, was named a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering for his… read more about Undergraduate News: 2010 through 2011 »
Submitted by Prof. Richard Palmer, Director of Graduate Studies Degrees and Exams Each student must pass their Preliminary Exam as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree, usually in their 3rd year. From September 2009 to April 2011, Preliminary Exams were passed by: Kristine Callan, Ben Cerio, Abe Clark, Seth Cohen, Chris Coleman-Smith, Ethan Elliott, Somayeh Farhadi… read more about Graduate News: 2010 through 2011 »