Friday Afternoon Seminar 2005 - 2006

When: Friday 5:00 pm

Where: S240/B131

To the speakers:

The purpose of the seminar is to introduce the research, the researcher(s) and the students to another in an informal way. No hardcore lectures are expected, rather an overview of the research being done. In order to spare the minds of the students I think it is best to keep the talk under one hour. Typically 25 students show up.

Me and Matt do the groceries, the department pays for the pizzas and the speaker for the drinks. The costs for the drinks are usually around $25. The speaker can give the money at the talk. I will bring the receipt with me.

In order to announce the speaker, it would be good to sent me the title/abstract of the talk at the latest on thursday, the week before the week of the talk. Please let me know whether a projector and/or a laptop is needed.

Thanks for volunteering to speak. If you have any questions, please contact me, Tom

Schedule Fall

Schedule Spring

Date	Speaker	Room	Title/Abstract
9/23/2005	Fred Walter	S240	Accretion Processes in Astrophysics: Optical and X-ray Astrocinematography
			Much that is interesting in astrophysics, from X-ray bursts to novae to star formation, is driven by accretion. Accretion processes are unstable, and manifest themselves though stochastic time variability. Accretion processes occur on timescales from milliseconds (in neutron stars) to years (symbiotic variables). Much of this time domain is a major uncharted realm in astrophysics.
9/30/2005	Dominik Schneble	S240	Exploring the quantum world with ultracold atomic gases
			In my talk I will give a brief introduction to experiments with ultracold quantum-degenerate atomic gases. With temperatures in the nanokelvin range and densities that are a hundred thousand times lower than that of air, these systems display intriguing quantum behavior on a macroscopic scale. As a specific example I will describe in detail how, starting from a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) and a laser beam, one can study bosonic stimulation effects and create phase-coherent amplifiers for matter waves. I will conclude by presenting our current work here at Stony Brook that aims at exploring low-dimensional quantum gases in optical lattices.
10/7/2005	Chi-Chang Kao	B131	I will give a general talk on condensed matter research done in my group, including magnetism, nanoscience, materials under high pressure, and soft matter-biophysics. I will also talk a little about synchrotron radiation and x-ray physics and optics since we use a lot of x-rays here.
10/14/2005	Jin Wang	B131	Energy Landscapes in Biological Physics
			I will give an overview of energy landscape ideas and its application to the study of protein folding, protein interactions and cellular networks.
10/21/2005			GRT Symposium
10/28/2005	Sergey Tolpygo	S240	Superconducting Integrated Circuits with 100 GHz Clock - Physics and Fabrication: Research Opportunities at SUNY and HYPRES Inc.
			This will be a brief overview of superconducting microelectronics – the field that enables both the fastest digital integrated circuits and solid-state quantum computing. Physics and materials science/electrical engineering issues will be discussed as well as fabrication challenges this relatively new, rapidly growing field is facing. The leading institutions in the world developing and commercializing superconducting microelectronics (SME) and SME systems are HYPRES Inc. and Stony Brook University. There are several research opportunities at HYPRES in the area of fabrication process development for integrated circuits with clock speed of 100 GHz and beyond as well as in the area of circuit design and simulations (SUNY/HYPRES). HYPRES has excellent fabrication facilities with more than 3000 sq. ft. of clean room space, 150-mm wafer processing, reactive ion etching (RIE), high-density plasma etching, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), metal deposition by sputtering and e-beam evaporation, ion-beam sputtering, chemical mechanical planarization, flip-chip bonding, etc. The test facilities include multiple test stations at liquid helium temperature, which allow for electrical testing and characterization of devices and integrated circuits from DC to ~50 GHz. The openings would be suitable for students in condensed matter, solid-state electronics, materials science who are more interested in applied rather than “pure” research and striving to see immediate implementation of their results in real devices, processes, and products.
4/11/2005	Jim Lattimer / Doug Swesty	S240	Neutron Stars
			Neutron stars are laboratories for dense matter physics. New observations of neutron stars from radio pulsars, X-ray binaries, quasi-periodic oscillators, X-ray bursters and thermally-emitting isolated neutron stars are setting bounds to masses, radii, rotation rates, radiation radii, redshifts, moments of inertia, temperatures and ages. Mass (M) measurements constrain the equation of state (EOS) at the highest densities and set bounds to the highest possible matter density. Radii (R) constrain the EOS in the vicinity of the nuclear saturation density. Radiation radius estimates from observations of thermal emission from neutron stars, if supplemented by redshift information from the same source, could yield precision radii. A moment of inertia measurement from a binary pulsar could ultimately yield precise radius estimates since their component masses are known. The largest pulsar rotation rates set upper bounds to the ratio R**3/M, and quasi-periodic oscillations, if associated with the innermost stable orbit, set upper limits to both M and R. Observations of cooling neutron stars up to a million years old shed light on the internal compositions, including their superfluid properties, by constraining the neutrino emission rates.
11/11/2005	Wei Ku	S240	Broken Symmetry in Condensed Matter Systems
			Symmetry breaking is one of the most fascinating phenomena of physics in general, especially in the field of condensed matter physics, in which the large number of interacting electrons provides endless possibilities of breaking the symmetry in long time scale. Together with the easy manipulation of these materials in the laboratory, this makes condensed matter systems an ideal playground for physicists to study the rich properties associated with symmetry breaking. (Many of these properties have serious future technological implications.) In this talk, two examples of exotic broken symmetry in real materials will be introduced: 1) gapless charge density wave in metal dichalcogenides, and 2) orbital ordering in manganites. Our recent theoretical study of these important yet puzzling systems will be discussed in an intuitive manner, based on newly developed ?first-principles? Wannier function analysis. Finally, future research opportunities involving basic excitation and symmetry breaking in nano-scale materials will be briefly discussed. * A research position in Dr. Ku's group is currently open to interested Ph. D. students
18/11/2005	Martin Rocek	B131	What is string theory, and why is it interesting?
			I will describe the motivations for string theory and give an outline of some of the main ideas, as well as some of the aspects that I am working on.
25/11/2005			Thanksgiving
2/12/2005	Thomas Weinacht	S240	Taking pictures with an ultrafast quantum camera
			Our research focuses on understanding molecular dynamics on ultrafast timescales (10^-15 s). We make use of intense short laser pulses to take pictures of molecular motion and construct 'molecular movies'. In addition we explore how shaped laser pulses can be used to direct chemical reactions on a microscopic scale.
9/12/2005	Fred Goldhaber	S240	Magnetic monopoles and cosmic inflation
			Two proposed mechanisms for eternal inflation are chaotic inflation and topological inflation, the latter including the possibility that the universe is the interior of a magnetic monopole. In my talk these terms and the background that goes with them will be explained. My conclusion is that our universe is not the inside of an inflated magnetic monopole, but it's a fascinating ride to get to that point.

Date	Speaker	Room	Title/Abstract
1/27/2006	Harold Metcalf	S240	Manipulating Atoms
1/27/2006	Harold Metcalf	S240	Laser light can be used to manipulate (e.g., cool) atoms from their ground states, but atoms in highly excited states can also undergo forced behavior modification. Not only that, but a very efficient process of exciting them to these states violates common intuition (so - what else is new about quantum mechanics?). There might even be a possibility for application of such capability.
2/3/2006	Thomas Hemmick	B131	The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC
2/3/2006	Thomas Hemmick	B131	Brookhaven National Laboratory's largest accelerator is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). This versatile machine is capable of accelerating and colliding virtually any nuclear species on any other at high energies (ECM = 200 GeV/nucleon for Au+Au). The motivation for colliding nuclei at such high energies is that the multiple, simultaneous collisions of individual nucleons produce the largest energy density available in the lab. At such high energies, QCD predicts that ordinary matter will undergo a phase transition freeing the quarks and gluons over a limited volume. This new phase of matter is dubbed the “Quark-Gluon Plasma”. I will discuss the experimental evidence for our having indeed formed a new state of matter as well as how this matter behaves quite differently than was previously imagined.
2/10/2006	Minghua Zhang	S240	Global Warming: What we know and what we don't know
2/10/2006	Minghua Zhang	S240	I will first give a brief overview of the two sides of the debate on global warming, including the causes, the physics, and the evidences of global warming. I will then give some selected problems of which we still lack fundamental understanding. They represent some of the largest uncertainties in projecting future climate changes. The also hinder our capability to predict climate anomaly with lead time of several months. These include the coherent atmospheric variability resulted from multiple-scale coupling of chaotic dynamics with moist physics, the interaction of the atmosphere with the underlying ocean at the gas-liquid interface near the equator of a rotating sphere (e.g., the El Nino events), behavior of boundary layer clouds that are driven by infrared radiative cooling and turbulence over the eastern oceans. All these topics are currently being actively researched in the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres (ITPA). Multiple research positions are available.
2/17/2006			cancelled
2/24/2006	Ismail Zahed	C133	I will discuss the research being done in the Nuclear Theory Group. (topics: Strongly Coupled Quark gluon Plasma (SQGP) at RHIC, random matrix theory, variational techniques, semi classical approach, renormalization group, instantons, AdS-CFT correspondence, lattice QCD)
3/3/2006	Mike Simon	B131	Stellar Binaries as the Key to the Mysteries of the Universe: Are You Nuts?
3/3/2006	Mike Simon	B131	My research addresses basic questions about star formation: What distribution of masses will a given star-forming region (SFR) in a molecular cloud produce? Given that binary formation is probably the dominant mode of star formation for stars like the Sun, what will be the distribution of masses of its binary stars? How can astronomers determine the ages of the stars produced? Do the answers depend on the physical parameters of the SFR?Astronomers use theoretical calculations describing the evolution of a young star to estimate their masses and ages. Unfortunately, for stars less massive than the Sun the calculations yield discrepant results and are essentially uncalibrated by empirical data. My colleagues and I are measuring the masses of low mass young stars and brown dwarfs by their gravitational interaction using several state of the art techniques and I will describe these in the seminar.
3/10/2006	Philip Allen	S240	Electrical Polarity in NaF cuboidal nanocrystals
3/10/2006	Philip Allen	S240	Clusters of alkali halides are a simple model system for observing the crossover from molecular physics to the physics of bulk solids. Electrical polarity has some unexpected manifestations in nanocrystals. For example, there may be a permanent dipole p even for undistorted symmetrical nanocrystals. The open shell system Na_14 F_13 is completely different, from the closed shell systems like Na_18F_18. It has a greatly enhanced electronic polarizability, associated with broken symmetry, and can be called a molecular superantenna.
3/17/2006	Clark Mc Grew	S240	SK, K2K, and T2K: Neutrino Experiments in Japan
3/17/2006	Clark Mc Grew	S240	Starting with the SK experiment in 1998, experiments in Japan have provided the first clear contradictions to the current standard model of particle physics. I will describe the current SK and K2K experiments as well as the T2K experiment which is under construction.
3/24/2006	Urs Achim Wiedemann	S240	Present and upcoming challenges in heavy ion physics 1: Theory
3/24/2006	Urs Achim Wiedemann	S240	Thirty years after its formulation, Quantum Chromodynamics has developed into a mature theory, whose precision frontier continues to be of great practical importance for disentangling the QCD background of new physics searches. As for any mature fundamental theory, the question arises how collective phenomena and macroscopic properties of matter emerge from the fundamental interactions. Heavy ion collisions provide a unique opportunity to address this question in the region of extreme matter densities. With the start of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC, it has become possible for the first time to embed in hot and dense QCD matter so-called 'hard processes', which are theoretically well-controlled in QCD. This has increased to major discoveries at RHIC. On Friday afternoon, I would like to discuss with you these major discoveries, and the challenges they pose for our theoretical understanding. We start by discussing what has been understood in the last few years. Then I present my view on which fundamental questions will become accessible in the coming years, due to an interplay between refined theory and refined experimental studies in the continuing and upcoming experimental programs at RHIC and at the LHC.
3/31/2006	Barbara Jacak	S240	Present and upcoming challenges in heavy ion physics 2: Experiment Hot Physics at the World's Hottest Collider
3/31/2006	Barbara Jacak	S240	High energy collisions of nuclei create in the laboratory the highest energy density matter known. Matter under such conditions is a plasma of quarks and gluons not confined inside hadrons, and existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang. Experiments at RHIC have shown that the behavior of this matter quite surprising. Examination of thousands of particles in the final state yields evidence for very rapid thermalization leading to a dense, opaque, collectively flowing system. The degrees of freedom cannot be hadrons, but the interactions are also not those expected for asymptotically free quarks. The new stuff behaves like a liquid with low viscosity, as expected for certain types of plasmas. We are only beginning to learn about its properties and how to understand it from the fundamental interactions between quarks and gluons. I will talk about plans to measure the plasma's temperature, energy transport, and ability to sweep up heavy quarks in its path. These are some of the topics for theses in the next few years!
4/7/2006	Wolfram Fischer	S240	The Quest for High Luminosity in Hadron Colliders
4/7/2006	Wolfram Fischer	S240	Hadron colliders, used for more than 30 years in nuclear and high energy physics, are some of the largest and most complex science tools. So far a total of 5 machines were build and operated, one more machine is under construction. Their main performance parameters are the collision energy, and the number of particle collisions they can produce per time, which is proportional to quantity known as luminosity. The history of hadron colliders is presented, and performance limitations are explained with examples from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the latest hadron collider that went into operation and the current record holder for the total collision energy.
4/14/2006			Good Friday
4/21/2006	5:30pm in stead of 5:00pm!!!! (overlap Simon's Lecure)		Modeling Type Ia Supernovae
4/21/2006	Mike Zingale	B131	Type Ia Supernova (SNe Ia) are the most violent thermonuclear explosions in the Universe. Their peak brightness rivals that of their host galaxy, and, as a result, they can be seen across enormous distances. This has led to a large impact on our understanding of the universe, including the discovery that the acceleration of the expansion rate of the Universe. Despite their observational successes, our theoretical understanding on SNe Ia is far from complete. We turn to computer simulations to build a model of these events. These simulations show that a thermonuclear burning front must accelerate dramatically as it moves from the center to the surface of the star, consuming the carbon fuel. In this lecture, I will describe the elements that go into a supercomputer simulation of Type Ia supernova, what the unanswered questions are, and how we hope to address these questions in the future.
4/28/2006	Adam Durst	S240	Dirac quasiparticles in High Tc Superconductors
4/28/2006	Adam Durst	S240	Experiments have now established that the order parameter (gap) in the high-Tc cuprate superconductors exhibits d-wave symmetry, vanishing at four points (in momentum space) on the Fermi surface. Near each of these four gap nodes, quasiparticles are easily excited and behave more like massless relativistic particles than electrons in a metal. In this seminar, I will talk about the low temperature electrical and thermal transport properties of these Dirac quasiparticles. In particular, I will discuss the consequences of charge order (believed to coexist with superconductivity in the cuprates) on quasiparticle transport.
5/5/2006	Luigi Longobardi	S240	The Exponential decay of Beer Froth
5/5/2006	Luigi Longobardi	S240	Dr. Arnd Leike, a German physicist who used beer to teach students about the analysis of experimental data has received the 2002 Ig Nobel prize in physics for his investigation into the "exponentital decay" of a beer's head. Exponential decay is common to many field of physics, Leike believes that using beer to teach about this concept "has the advantages that it is cheap, clear and motivating because it investigates an everyday phenomenon." In my talk I will review Leike's results, and I will discuss some recent developments studied by the members of the "Institute Brewing and Distilling"