Department of PhysicsA contingent of Duke physicists traveled to Baton Rouge in late October to attend the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society conference. Professors Kate Scholberg, Ayana Arce, and John Thomas gave invited talks, and professors Roxanne Springer and Anton Tonchev organized sessions. Graduate student Taritree Wongjirad presented a poster, as did undergrads Ashley Jones, Farzan Beroz, and Wes Johnson.… read more about Profs and Students Travel to SESAPS Conference in Louisiana »
NOTE: LINKS HAVE BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN This month we are featuring the home page of Duke graduate student Junyao Tang. His page is a collection of his professional work at Duke and beyond, and also hosts a few areas about his life as a graduate student at Duke. read more about Website of the Month - Junyao Tang »
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been named co-leader of one of the international research groups on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, along with Fabienne Ledroit of France. The group Kotwal is co-leading consists of about 80 scientists who are using ATLAS to look for evidence of new “boson” particles, whose existence would indicate new forces. The ATLAS experiment is one of the four main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. Altogether, about 2,500 physicists are… read more about Ashutosh Kotwal named co-leader of research group on ATLAS »
Duke hosted the 30th Annual Dynamic Days conference January 5th – 8th, 2011. This annual conference covers a variety of topics within nonlinear dynamics. The conference took place at The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, NC, but was hosted by the faculty from Duke. Researchers from universities around the US and Europe were present, and many students participated as well by presenting posters in the poster sessions. You can find the complete list here. read more about Dynamic Days Conference Hosted by Duke »
Students in Prof. Moo-Young Han’s Physics 100 class last semester surprised him with a customized cake to celebrate his upcoming retirement. Han, who began as an assistant professor at Duke in 1967, is retiring March 1, 2011. Han, who discovered the color charges of quarks together with Yoichiro Nambu, excels in communicating complex physics topics to students and laypeople. He has won awards for his teaching, including the Duke General Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1972. He says he… read more about Physics 100 Students Commemorate Han's Upcoming Retirement »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau was quoted Thursday on the Duke University Research Blog in an entry entitled "Tangling the microscopic ladder." Read the article here. read more about Prof. Charbonneau quoted on Duke's Research Blog »
Prof. John Thomas celebrated his 60th birthday on December 15th. To celebrate, the students in the JETLab research group took Thomas to dinner the week prior and presented him with a very creative cake. The cake's icing illustrates elliptic flow data from the research group's original 2002 Science paper. Thomas was delighted by the gift from the students in his research group and shared images of the cake with the Duke Physics News team. For more information on Thomas' work… read more about Prof. John Thomas Celebrated His 60th Birthday »
Lecturer Robert G. Brown taught Physics 53 this fall simultaneously on campus and at Duke’s Marine Lab in Beaufort via videoconferencing. He wrote an entry on the Duke CIT (Center for Instructional Technology) blog about the experience, including lessons learned. Check it out here. This isn't the first time that a Physics instructor has connected to CIT's resources. Earlier this year Prof. Kate Scholberg participated in a CIT project that involved producing videos of her solving… read more about Website of the Month - Physics Connnects to CIT Blog »
Henry Everitt, Adjunct Professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering, has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "his broad leadership in furthering quantum information science, including the effective stewardship of quantum information programs for the U.S. government and also for his own research in semiconductor optics." For the official citation notice on the APS website, follow this link. According to the APS Website: "Each nomination is evaluated by the… read more about Prof. Everitt Cited as APS Fellow »
Graduate student James Esterline co-authored a paper with Prof. Werner Tornow and co-researchers. The paper is entitled "Determination of the proton and alpha-particle light-response functions for the KamLAND, BC-501A and BC-517H liquid scintillators" and appears in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. To read the abstract click this link. Senior William Corse co-authored a paper with Prof. Werner Tornow, physics alum… read more about Student Research Updates »
Professors Ayana Arce and Mark Kruse are featured in a new series of videos called “Physics for the 21st Century” produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and available online. Kruse says the goal of the videos is to “share some of the excitement of what’s going on in the frontier of physics right now to high school students and teachers, and interested undergrads as well.” The videos, with accompanying transcripts and lesson plans, are available for free on the Annenberg… read more about Professors Ayana Arce and Mark Kruse Featured in Video Series »
Prof. Ronen Plesser was featured in Duke Magazine's November-December 2010 issue in an article entitled "The Science of Stargazing." You can read the feature here. There was also a similar story in Duke's employee newsletter Working @ Duke's December 2009/January 2010 issue. Read it online on page 5 here. read more about Prof. Ronen Plesser in Duke Magazine »
Chris De Pree, ’88, teaches physics and astronomy at Agnes Scott College, a women’s college in Decatur, Georgia. He also co-authors books on astronomy for the general public and does research involving massive star formation using data from the VLA (Very Large Array) radio observatory in New Mexico. After earning his undergraduate degree in physics from Duke, De Pree taught high school for several years. “I really loved teaching,” he says, “and for awhile I thought I would keep going with teaching high… read more about Teaching at a Small Liberal Arts College »
Duke Physics graduate student Abhijit Mehta spent a week this summer on the isle of Lindau in Germany, interacting with 60 Nobel Laureates and about 600 “young researchers” from all over the world. Mehta was among 75 United States graduate students selected to attend the famous meeting. His trip was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and supported administratively by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). Mehta relished being able to meet and talk with the students,… read more about Mehta Attends 60th Annual Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students »
Matthew Hastings joined the Duke Physics faculty this fall as an associate professor. Hastings, who earned his PhD in physics at MIT came to Duke from Microsoft. Before that he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests include quantum computing, condensed matter physics, quantum information theory, and mathematical physics. “My main interest is what quantum information theory can do for condensed matter physics and vice versa,” Hastings says. “I’m interested in the boundary between… read more about Matthew Hastings Joins Duke Physics Faculty »
Prof. Al Goshaw co-authored an obituary published in Physics Today of William Walker, James B. Duke Professor of Physics emeritus, who passed away in April. Read the obituary here. read more about William Walker’s Obituary in Physics Today »
NOTE: LINK HAS BECOME BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN Math Prof. Hubert Bray and Physics postdoc Andriy Badin gave a talk on "Dark Matter in Galaxies" on Monday, December 6. It is now available on the web here. read more about Dark Matter in Galaxies talk online »
Two new albums have been added to the Physics Department's Flickr profile that depict two recent undergraduate student events by the Physics Outreach Group. Physics' and Chemistry's Outreach Groups' An Evening of Science on September 22, 2010 can be viewed here. Read the entry on that story here. The USA Science and Engineering Festival on October 23-24, 2010 on the National Mall in Washington, DC can be seen here. read more about New Photos of Undergrad Student Activities »
From Ashley Yeager of Duke's Office of News and Communications: "Using lasers to contain some ultra-chilled atoms, a team of scientists have measured the viscosity or stickiness of a gas often considered to be the sixth state of matter. The measurements verify that this gas can be used as a “scale model” of exotic matter, such as super-high temperature superconductors, the nuclear matter of neutron stars, and even the state of matter created microseconds after the Big Bang." "The results may also allow experimental tests… read more about John Thomas featured in Science »
In November, Professor Stefano Curtarolo and colleagues published a paper in the journal Advanced Materials about a new technology they developed for use in archaeology. The technology uses infrared spectroscopy to obtain spectral “fingerprints” of minerals, allowing scientists to quickly distinguish between manmade and natural minerals in the field. It can be used, for example, to tell the difference between calcite from manmade plaster and calcite in limestone. Curtarolo is associate professor of… read more about Prof. Curtarolo's Research Assists Archaeologists »
Professors Steffen Bass and Berndt Mueller rejoiced this month at the news that the Large Hadron Collider started its program of collisions of lead nuclei at unprecedented energies, almost 15 times higher than those previously explored at Brookhaven National Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. The lead nuclei are being collided as part of three large… read more about Duke Theorists Begin Analyzing Exciting New Data from LHC »
Prof. Haiyan Gao spent one month this summer at Tsinghua University as the Changjiang Lectureship Chair Professor. During this time, she co-chaired a very successful workshop in Beijing on "Second Workshop on Hadron Physics in China and Opportunities with 12 GeV JLab." She will return to Tsinghua this fall to continue her collaborations with Chinese physicists in hadronic physics. In September 2010, Prof. Haiyan Gao was informed by Dr. Kate Kirby, executive officer of APS, that she won the 2010 APS General… read more about Prof. Gao Visits Tsinghua University, wins APS General Councilor Position »
Prof. Robert Behringer will receive two grants this year to pursue his research in granular materials and thin liquid films. They are from NASA and NSF, and Behringer will serve as lead PI and co-PI, respectively, on these projects. Prof. Robert Behringer will receive an award of $310,000 from NASA for a joint European Space Agency-NASA project, "Compaction and Sound in Granular Matter – comp.gran". This is an international collaboration to understand the propagation of sound in granular materials… read more about Behringer wins awards from NASA and NSF »
In February 2010, Prof. Moo-Young Hanwas selected from among the top 5% of all Trinity College undergraduate instructors at for his contribution to teaching and fostering intellectual growth of undergraduate students at Duke during the spring semester 2009. read more about Han Wins Teaching Award »
A workshop "From Strong Fields to Colorful Matter" was held on October 24-27, 2010 in honor of Prof. Berndt Mueller's 60th birthday. The workshop consisted of talks by several distinguished nuclear physicists, a banquet, and hopefully a little time to enjoy the foliage around Asheville, NC. read more about Workshop in Asheville honors Berndt Mueller »
Prof. Warren Warren from the Department of Chemistry was recently recognized by the American Physical Society, which awarded him the 2011 Herbert P. Broida Prize "For the development of nonlinear coherent techniques which enhance molecular spectroscopy and molecular imaging." Congratulations! read more about Prof. Warren wins 2011 Herbert Broida Prize »
Graduate student James Esterline co-authored a paper with Prof. Werner Tornow and co-researchers. The paper is entitled "Determination of the proton and alpha-particle light-response functions for the KamLAND, BC-501A and BC-517H liquid scintillators" and appears in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. To read the abstract click this link. Senior William Corse co-authored a paper with Prof. Werner Tornow, physics alum… read more about Student Research Updates »
Prof. Al Goshaw was re-elected Chair of the US ATLAS Institutional Board in September 2010, where he will be helping to coordinate the US ATLAS university groups for the next few years. Congratulations! read more about Prof. Goshaw to Coordinate US ATLAS Univeristy Groups Once More »
On October 26, 2010, Jie Ren's photo of stress in a two-dimensional granular material was selected as the "Picture of the Day" by the National Science Foundation. The work leading to the picture was conducted by Jie in Prof. Robert Behringer's laboratory. As mentioned previously, the photo also won first prize in the Mahato Memorial Scientific Visualization Contest. read more about Duke Graduate Student Photo selected "Picture of the Day" by NSF »
The grant will allow more undergraduates to conduct research at LHC, as Ariana Minot did last summer. Profs. Ayana Arce, Steffen Bass, Al Goshaw, Ashutosh Kotwal, Mark Kruse, and Berndt Mueller have been awarded a grant of $20,000 from The Duke Endowment to support undergraduate research that will be undertaken both here on campus as well… read more about New Grant to Support Undergrad Research at Duke, LHC »