Department of Physics
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal and collaborators published a paper in the March 21, 2010 issue of Physical Review Letters titled “Search for High Mass Resonances Decaying to Muon Pairs in √s=1.96 TeV pp̅ Collisions.” In this paper, Prof. Kotwal and his colleagues analyzed the spectrum of energies of pairs of muons produced in proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator, and recorded by the CDF experiment. The analysis was designed to search for new gauge bosons, mediators of… read more about Prof. Kotwal Publishes Paper in Physical Review Letters »
This semester many Duke Physics graduate students have progressed in their progress towards their degrees. Below are just a few highlights of their achievements: January 21, 2011: Huaixiu Zheng (G08) passed his preliminary exam. His advisor is Prof. Harold Baranger. March 16, 2011: Abe Clark (G08) passed his preliminary exam. His advisor is Prof. Bob Behringer. April 4, 2011: Taritree Wongjirad (G08) passed his preliminary exam. His advisor is Prof. Kate Scholberg. Adam… read more about Graduate Student News »
Prof. Stefano Curtarolo received the 2011 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics. The Award will be 1000 euros plus a medal and certificate to be provided by IUPAP. As the recipient, Curtarolo will be invited to present a paper and receive his award at the Commission’s 2011 Conference on Computational Physics (CCP2011) being held October 30-November 3, 2011 in Gatlinburg, Tennesse. read more about Prof. Curtarolo recives Young Scientist Prize from IUPAP »
Prof. Robert Behringer was invited to join the new journal AIP Advances. Prof. Behringer's article "Force chains in a two-dimensional granular pure shear experiment" was published in AIP's Chaos and was one of its monthly top 20 most-downloaded articles during 2010. The invitation to join Advances stated that without it "Chaos would not be one of the most highly cited journals in its field." Because of his work, they have invited him to submit his most current research to the first issue of their new… read more about Prof. Behringer to join AIP Advances »
Recently many Duke Physics undergraduates have received awards and recognition for their work. Here is a list of some of the latest achievements: Farzan Beroz, a junior physics major, got an honorable mention for the Goldwater Award, an impressive academic achievement nationwide. Vivek Bhattacharya recently won a prestigious national Goldwater Fellowship which gave him national publicity. He is doing interesting research in theoretical nuclear particle physics with Prof. Steffen… read more about Highlights of Undergraduate Achievements »
This month we have selected the Behringer Group Website as our Website of the Month. This site features the people, research, and publications of the Behringer Lab, led by Professor Bob Behringer. Prof. Behringer, the James B. Duke Professor of Physics, received his PhD from Duke University in 1975. His Lab currently includes postdocs and graduate students. The members of the Behringer Lab research aspects of granular and fluid flows. read more about Website of the Month - Behringer Group Website »
Dr. Rajarshi Raut’s poster “Measurements of the 86Kr(gamma,n) reaction at HIGS” has been chosen the Best Poster Award by the European Physical Society and fifth Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics Organizing Committee. The conference was held in Eilat, Israel, on April 3-8, 2011. Following the declaration of the award, Dr. Raut was invited to make a 10 minutes oral presentation. This award was also complimented by a check of 500 euros. Dr. Raut is a second year Postdoctoral Associate in the Duke physics… read more about Duke postdoc Dr. Raut receives Best Poster Award by EPS »
At the April 18 Hertha Sponer Presidential lecture at Duke, Dean Nancy Allen announced that an English translation of a biography of Hertha Sponer will soon be available online. Hertha Sponer was a physics professor at Duke from 1936 until 1965. Originally from Germany, she fled to the U.S. before the start of the war. Prof. Horst Meyer, one of the organizers of the biography project, says, “Miss Sponer was not Jewish, but she was a woman. In those days, under the Nazis, women were not seen to be fit to have an academic… read more about Duke Physics to Publish Hertha Sponer Biography Online »
After getting a PhD in physics at Duke in 1998 and earning a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Scott Zoldi is now Vice President of Analytic Science at FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) in San Diego, California. “When I was at Duke this was not my first view of where I would end up,” he says, “but it’s actually a natural place for theoretical physicists.” What links all his work together is computational analytics. “Working with data and trying to understand complex systems and… read more about Scott Zoldi, PhD 1998, is Vice President of Analytic Science at FICO »
We received this update from Prof. Al Goshaw: Mia Liu, my post doc, Andrea Bocci and I have made a first measurement with the ATLAS experiment of W and Z boson produced with high energy photons. This probes the structure of the W/Z/photon coupling in a new energy domain, and is sensitive to technicolor mesons decaying to Wg and Zg. The research was done with 2 other colleagues from Oxford and Academia Sinica. Andrea will present the results at the XIX International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering… read more about Prof. Goshaw's Group's First Measurement with ATLAS Experiment »
Prof. Anton Tonchev’s article “Precision Photo-Induced Cross-Section Measurement Using the Monoenergetic and Polarized Gamma Beams at High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source” was highlighted by the 2011 Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Annual as a “Publication Contest Winner”. Prof. Tonchev received a three-year award of $900,000 through the Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Program in 2009. The aim of this research activity is to use the novel source of γ-radiation at the High Intensity… read more about Prof. Tonchev Highlighted by 2011 Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Annual »
Prof. Haiyan Gao's group and Prof. Henry Weller's group completed a very successful two-week run on March 5th at the HIGS facility on double-polarized three-body photodisintegration of 3He, thanks to the outstanding quality of the beam delivered by the FEL staff under the leadership of Prof. Ying Wu. For more about the HIGS facility's recent achievements, see our news story "HIGS Attracts Worldwide Attention for its Gamma Rays." read more about Recent HIGS Update »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau has received a five-year award of $450,000 through the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. Charbonneau will use the award to study soft materials, such as colloids, by theory and simulation. Under certain conditions, soft matter can be used to create complex and useful structures at very small scales. Charbonneau plans to investigate ways of controlling the assembly and dynamics of two kinds of soft matter: proteins and colloidal… read more about Charbonneau Received NSF CAREER Award »
NOTE: LINK HAS BECOME BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN Prof. Henry Everitt, adjunct professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at Duke, is featured on the website of the National Defense Education Program as part of a series of articles about scientists who work in defense laboratories. The goal of the articles is to inspire students to pursue degrees and careers in science and engineering. Everitt grew up near the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and now works… read more about Henry Everitt Featured on Website of National Defense Education Program »
After 25 years at Duke, Prof. John Thomas will be moving his research program to the physics department at North Carolina State University. "For me, this will be an exciting new challenge and an opportunity to join a new community," Thomas says. "While I look forward to expanding my work and making new friends, I will miss many of you who have been my friends and encouraged me for so many years." read more about John Thomas moving to NC State »
Following the successful workshop on “Partonic Transverse Momentum in Hadrons: Quark Spin-Orbit Correlations and Quark-Gluon Interactions,” which was held March 12-13, 2010 at Duke, Prof. Haiyan Gao and workshop participants published a whitepaper titled “Transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution/fragmentation functions at an electron-ion collider” in European Physics Journal A. read more about Prof. Gao and Others Publish Whitepaper »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau published a paper in the December 10, 2010 issue of Physical Review Letters titled “Reentrant and Isostructural Transitions in a Cluster-Crystal Former.” A summary of the paper is available on the Duke Research blog. (NOTE: LINK HAS BROKEN DURING WEBSITE REDESIGN.) read more about Charbonneau Publishes Paper in Physical Review Letters »
Jing Wang, Yunhui Zhu, Rui Zhang, and Prof. Daniel Gauthier have published a paper titled “FSBS resonances observed in a standard highly-nonlinear fiber” in the online journal Optics Express. Zhang explains, “We presented observations of forward stimulated Brillouin scattering (FSBS) in a standard highly-nonlinear fiber and observed multiple radially-guided acoustic resonances. FSBS occurs when two co-propagating optical beams interacts with transverse acoustic waves trapped in the… read more about Optics Group Publishes Paper in Optics Express »
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - email update from Prof. Werner Tornow I arrived in Tokyo on Monday, March 14, three days after Friday's devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami. During my 10 years plus travel to Japan I never went through immigration and customs at Tokyo-Narita airport as fast as this time, because there were only a handful of non-Japanese on my Delta flight from Atlanta. However, for the first time I had to wait much longer than usual to get on a bus to Tokyo's Haneda airport… read more about Update from Werner Tornow, who is working at KamLAND in Japan »
Many Duke professors and graduate students will be presenting papers at the American Physical Society meeting March 21-25, 2011, in Dallas, Texas. Click the links below to see the full list of presenters and talks. Note: We only included those authors with a Duke affiliation. MARCH 21 Joshua Dijksman Khan Academy: TheWorld’s Free Virtual School http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR11/Event/136506 Huaixiu Zheng, Harold Baranger and Dan Gauthier Quantum Transport of Strongly Correlated Photons in… read more about Duke at the American Physical Society meeting »
A short video called "Jams in the Hopper" showcases the research of Junyao Tang, a graduate student in Prof. Bob Behringer's lab. Tang uses a two-dimensional simulated grain hopper to study how particles interact when they jam up in the mouth of a hopper. Jams are a big problem in industries that use hoppers to to move grains, berries, coffee beans, or other large particles. Behringer says, "The goal is to understand the nature of the flow, including the flow… read more about Behringer Lab’s Work Featured in Video »
Kyozi Kawasaki, winner of the Boltzmann Medal in 2001, earned his PhD in physics at Duke in 1959. The Boltzmann Medal is awarded by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Commission on Statistical Physics (C3) every three years at the International Conference on Statistical Physics (STATPHYS). According to C3, Kawasaki received the Boltzmann Medal for “his contribution to our understanding of dynamic phenomena in condensed matter systems, in particular the mode-coupling theory of fluids near… read more about Boltzmann Medal Winner Kyozi Kawasaki Earned PhD at Duke »
At right: The researchers and developers of the Duke FEL and HIGS, including physicists, graduate students, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff. The group is inside the booster synchrotron, a full-energy injector into the storage ring. The synchrotron was the major addition to the accelerator facility constructed as part of the recent upgrade completed in 2007. The recently upgraded HIGS facility on Duke’s campus has become the world’s most powerful Compton gamma-ray source. HIGS—the “high intensity… read more about HIGS Attracts Worldwide Attention for its Gamma Rays »
During the Fall 2010 semester Prof. Joshua Socolar’s course evaluations placed him in the top 5% of all Duke University undergraduate instructors. Socolar was recognized by Deans Alvin L. Crumbliss and Lee D. Baker with the words “Professors like you enable us to build upon our academic traditions by infusing academic instruction with a sense of dynamic engagement and inspired learning. We wish you continued success.” Please congratulate Prof. Socolar when you see him next. read more about Prof. Socolar's course evaluations in top 5% »
Christopher Lester, ‘08, has received a U.S. Energy Department Graduate Fellowship to support his graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. Lester, who is from Marietta, Georgia, is currently pursuing a PhD in high energy physics and is doing research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. The fellowship consists of $50,500 per year for three years to cover tuition, living expenses, research materials, and related travel. “My work at Duke really helped me obtain the DOE fellowship,”… read more about Duke Grad Receives Prestigious DOE Fellowship »
Prof. Nicolas Buchler has received the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes, which consists of $75,000 per year for two years. Buchler, who came to Duke in August 2009 with joint appointments in biology and physics, plans to use the grant to study the evolution of genes that oscillate autonomously in anticipation of periodic changes in environmental factors such as light, temperature, and availability of nutrients. Specifically, he’ll be studying the evolution of circadian… read more about Prof. Nicolas Buchler Receives Funding from March of Dimes »
Prof. Berndt Mueller was recently elected vice chair of the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) of the American Physical Society. As such, he is in line to become chair-elect, chair, and past chair of the DNP. The DNP awards prizes for research, plans an annual conference, and promotes the work of APS nuclear physicists. The DNP also works to educate the public and politicians about nuclear physics. read more about Prof. Mueller Is Vice Chair of APS’s Division of Nuclear Physics »
Submitted by Josh Albert. In May, 2010, the whole Duke Neutrino Group was in Japan for the Super-Kamiokande collaboration meeting. This was Ashley's first trip there (she's an undergrad). We presented our results at the meeting, and after the meeting, Ashley and I took a short vacation in Tokyo. View photos of Josh's latest trip here, read about his first trip here and view those photos here. read more about Duke Neutrino Group in Japan »
Submitted by Ashley Jones. The Southeast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics was held January 14-17 on the campus of North Carolina State University. It was a time for young women in the field to come together to share their knowledge and learn about their opportunities for the future. It was geared specifically towards women in an effort to reach out to females in a male-dominated field. Participants shared their research in oral presentations as well as a poster session. They sat in… read more about Undergrad Ashley Jones attends SCUWP »
Third-year graduate student Chris Coleman-Smith spent five weeks in India during the months of December and January using a $3,000 grant from the American Physical Society and the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum. Coleman-Smith says, “I applied because one of my collaborators works in India and I’ve always wanted to go from a fairly young age.” He spent the first week in Goa at the International Conference on Physics and Astrophysics of Quark Gluon Plasma, where he gave a paper titled “Implementing… read more about Coleman-Smith Gets Grant for Travel to India »